In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe s wife, Violet, attacks the girl s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life."
"Wonderful. . . . A brilliant, daring novel. . . . Every voice amazes." -- Chicago Tribune
"She may be the last classic American writer, squarely in the tradition of Poe, Melville, Twain and Faulkner." -- Newsweek
"[A] masterpiece. . . . She has moved from strength to strength until she has reached the distinction of being beyond comparison." -- Entertainment Weekly
"Thrillingly written . . . seductive. . . . Some of the finest lyric passages ever written in a modern novel." -- Chicago Sun-Times
"A compelling blend of heart and language. . . . Resounds with passion." -- The Boston Globe
"Marvelous. . . . Morrison is perhaps the finest novelist of our time." -- Vogue
"The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to black women." --Edna O'Brien, The New York Times Book Review
"She captures that almost indistinguishable mixture of the anxiety and rapture of expectation--that state of desire where sin is just another word for appetite." -- San Francisco Chronicle
"As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved. . . . Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem's jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear." -- Glamour
"She is the best writer in America. Jazz, for sure; but also Mozart." --John Leonard, National Public Radio
"A masterpiece. . . . A sensuous, haunting story of various kinds of passion. . . . Mesmerizing." -- Cosmopolitan
"Lyrically brooding. . . . One accepts the characters of Jazz as generalized figures moving rhythmically in the narrator's mind." -- The New York Times
"Transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious." -- People
