Jazz (Vintage International) Paperback – Deckle Edge, 1 January 1900

Breathtaking, witty and just sumptuous in its language. I laughed, cried and smiled throughout. Ms Morrison is incomparable. A league of her own.

It is like reading a piece of music.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, I have heard but never listened to Jazz music much. But I did try to after reading this book and what I found out was that while jazz does have some recognisable melodies, it's just a small part of it. Every musician takes turns improvising, playing all kinds of crazy notes: high, low, long, short, gravelly and clear. So the main focus is creativity and using your imagination. This uniqueness pretty much sums up the character of the book that Toni Morrison has written.No, this book isn't about the music or the history of Jazz at all, even though this music is like an omnipresent tone in the entire novel.Each of the characters play out their respective interpretation of the chain of events and their lives in general and it all fits in and becomes a single lyric or song in the end. A really beautiful, enriching but very hurtful and sad song.The blurb at the back pretty much sums what you are getting into; Joe Trace, middle aged salesman shoots his teenage lover Dorcas to death. At the funeral; Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse- and well that's the mother of all explosive beginnings, right there! No matter how dire these circumstances; what follows is beautiful prose; almost poetic traversing the history, past and present of all the characters.It was easy to fall for Morrison's lyrical rendition; the words were ample and like a flowing river; encompassing thought, emotions and events. The storyline is very discontinuous though; much like jazz itself but the impact is profound and the character sketch is disturbingly real.My only grouse was that towards the end it felt like there were some grounds of justification or generating empathy for Joe. While I appreciated his difficult station in life I would've been happier if the act of violence was portrayed in mere black and white rather than shades of grey. That is solely because of my personal belief against violence. Well, having said that; this is fiction and so there could be more than one interpretation or assessment.Do let me know if you've read this- what do you feel about Joe's predicament and actions.And yes, I highly recommend!