Product Description

"They shoot the white girl first. With the others they can take their time." Toni Morrison's first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature opens with a horrifying scene of mob violence then chronicles its genesis in a small all-black town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by descendants of free slaves as intent on isolating themselves from the outside world as it once was on rejecting them, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage...

Paradise is a tour de force of storytelling power, richly imagined and elegantly composed. Morrison challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth, into an unforgettable meditation on race, religion, gender, and the way a society can turn on itself until it is forced to explode.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71995 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.com Review
Oprah Book Club® Selection, January 1998: Toni Morrison's Paradise takes place in the tiny farming community of Ruby, Oklahoma, which its residents proudly proclaim "the one all-black town worth the pain." Settled by nine African American clans during the 1940s, the town represents a small miracle of self-reliance and community spirit. Readers might be forgiven, in fact, for assuming that Morrison's title refers to Ruby itself, which even during the 1970s retains an atmosphere of neighborliness and small-town virtue. Yet Paradises are not so easily gained. As we soon discover, Ruby is fissured by ancestral feuds and financial squabbles, not to mention the political ferment of the era, which has managed to pierce the town's pious isolation. In the view of its leading citizens, these troubles call for a scapegoat. And one readily exists: the Convent, an abandoned mansion not far from town--or, more precisely, the four women who occupy it, and whose unattached and unconventional status makes them the perfect targets for patriarchal ire. ("Before those heifers came to town," the men complain, "this was a peaceable kingdom.") One July morning, then, an armed posse sets out from Ruby for a round of ethical cleansing.

Paradise actually begins with the arrival of these vigilantes, only to launch into an intricate series of flashbacks and interlaced stories. The cast is large--indeed, it seems as though we must have met all 360 members of Ruby's populace--and Morrison knows how to imprint even the minor players on our brains. Even more amazing, though, are the full-length portraits she draws of the four Convent dwellers and their executioners: rich, rounded, and almost painful in their intimacy. This richness--of language and, ultimately, of human understanding--combats the aura of saintliness that can occasionally mar Morrison's fiction. It also makes for a spectacular piece of storytelling, in which such biblical concepts as redemption and divine love are no postmodern playthings but matters of life and (in the very first sentence, alas) death.

From Library Journal
It's the 1970s, and four young women living in a convent near an all-black town have been viciously attacked. This is Morrison's first novel since winning the Nobel prize, and by the time she's done, she has taken on Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, the counterculture, and more. The 400,000-copy first printing is no surprise.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
Paradise is the strangest and most original book that Morrison has written.... the genius of Paradise is that the biblical subtext is rarely allowed to obtrude on the reader's attention to the gritty particulars of the characters' stories.... One reason that these stories are so gripping is that they are hard to understand. The energy we have to spend puzzling out the various pieces and getting them into some kind of satisfactory narrative shape keeps our focus on the realistic plane of the novel and allows that allegorical machinery to operate more or less hidden from view.

Customer Reviews

I'm No English Major, And This Was Great
Seems to be a lot of disagreement on this book. While I can understand a lot of people not liking it (not a conventional plot driven novel), what I can't understand is how so many people found it "confusing". I'm a handyman, not some english major grad student, and I didn't have any problem following along, though the ending was NOT straight forward. I loved it. It was one of the best books I've read in years. Another reviewer called it "Faulkner light"; they were right. Actually they could have called it "Absalom, Absalom!" light. It's like Faulkner with a GREAT editor. This book was MUCH better than "Beloved". If you love great language and writing, it's hard to go wrong with Toni Morrison.

About as near perfection as you can get!
After reading Paradise, I found myself going back and rereading parts of the text. Toni Morrison is a breathtaking, experienced writer who proves why she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. This book really talks about two cultures, the male-dominated Ruby, Oklahoma and a Convent run by Catholic nuns who also take in women seeking refuge. The first chapter named Ruby explains the circumstances surrounding the possible massacre at the Convent caused by the angry men of Ruby who sees the Convent as a threat to their community. The women are described as weird for leaving their abusive husbands and families for the convent. Their minister preaches that the place is a coven rather than a convent. In actuality, the place is a refuge or sanctuary for the women of the convent. Not all are nuns, the other women in the convent don't take vows but they do respect the lives of the nuns and they become an unorthodox, non-traditional community and support group for each other. For them, this Convent has become paradise since it's a haven from the abusive world of men. Morrison doesn't imply or suggest that the women are actually lovers but there are hints of lesbianism among them. It's not like they don't have their share of problems. The women are viewed by the locales as weirdoes and outsiders. The men don't understand why the women live there alone by choice. It's because the men's behavior of constant abuse whether they have been beaten or raped is what draws the women there. Morrison writes on each female character after Ruby like Mavis, Grace, Divine, Colosanta, and others. The chapters help explain what motivates women to go there seeking a non-threatening and non-abusive environment. In a sense, that is what Paradise is about for these women. In actuality, women's choices were few which included either entering the Convent or marrying and producing. Women who did not enter the convent or marry and become mothers became an object of scorn and curiousity. The unmarried women are the subject of rumors but even more so over the centuries. The Convent where the Sisters of any order live is a sanctuary and there are healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships as in all families. The sisterhood whether it's ordained by the Catholic Church or by a group of women comes together to support each other in a man's world. I was very impressed by Morrison's book. I think she gets better with each one over time.

beautifully written but confusing story
I considered myself a fan of Toni Morrison but I had a
really hard time with this one. The stream of consciousness
that made her a star with her other highly-elevated novels,
for example Beloved, doesn't quite come together correctly
in this book. The book has too many characters, which is
fine but all of them are given equal importance, making
it extremely difficult for the reader to understand what
to grasp onto. I think Morrison may be trying to too hard
with this one and should instead just let the story unfold.

It's still a great story though and I honestly couldn't give
it below four stars.