Jazz

By: Toni Morrison

Narrated by: Toni Morrison

Length: 3 hrs

Publisher's Summary

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.

©2007 Toni Morrison (P)2015 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

"[A] masterpiece.... She has moved from strength to strength until she has reached the distinction of being beyond comparison." ( Entertainment Weekly)

"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)

"Lyrically brooding.... One accepts the characters of Jazz as generalized figures moving rhythmically in the narrator's mind." ( The New York Times)

The audio is not the same as the book

Any additional comments?

I like to read and listen to the story at the same time. This is the first time that I couldn't do that. For me was disappointing no the story but the fact that the autor cut some passages in the book.

Abridged

Great writer/reader, but roughly half of the book is missing from the audio recording. honestly, I feel ripped off

Why does the audiobook skips lines of the story

I was using this audio book and the reader would skip pages and it would be very confusing to follow up.

Abridged

What disappointed you about Jazz?

This is an Abridged version of the book. The author is a master, and nothing in the book is superfluous. It's unfortunate that the audiobook is not more clearly marked as being abridged. I will be returning it.

It’s abridged.

I don’t really understand why this amazing book is abridged. The story is incredible, the narration is equally so! I just wish I could read the whole book.

Would be nice if it was the whole book.

I prefer to read the book in it’s tactile iteration as I am listening to the audio version. This heavily abridged version of Jazz makes this impossible. Enjoyed it for what it was though.

Good listen

I enjoyed the jazz music in the background. It helped communicate the mood of scene.

It is what the title advertises.

Fluid language that washes over the listener soothing while the pain unfolds in the story. it is beauty wrought from ugliness. my only sadness is that the rhythms and musicality of her reading, and of the prose itself, is so soothing one can forget to make sense of the sounds for a bit here and there, and have to go back and listen again. Nevermind the complaint, as it's not a chore to do.

A true masterpiece!

A joy to read, read again and the.n be blessed with the treat of hearing Ms. Morrison read it to one's ear. Each experience of this book reveals new dimensions of the textured characters and offers a sufficient helping of the history of the Great Migration of African Americans from the brutal South to the not so subtle prejudice and veiled segregation of the North.
Jazz for me remains a staple and throughly satisfying and provoking work of literary art!

Extraordinary

Interweaving stories, layers of lives and histories, move like music, like jazz. Echoes of pain, love, origins become the whole novel -- the call and response and turning, reaching of jazz. Time is fluid. Lives blend and separate. Toni Morrison merges text with music, one reflects the other in this brilliantly crafted novel that is haunting, visceral, as all great music is.

Brilliant but abridged

This is such a compelling listen and amazing to hear Morrison speak her mind words. Just be aware that this is not the complete book!