Paradise

Hands down, her most "difficult" novel. It has over 100 characters, and it's plot centers on the mysterious disappearances of three out of five bodies of women massacred at The Convent, an abandoned sanctuary and shelter.

Each chapter weaves back and forth from each woman's back story as to how and why they wound up in Ruby, Oklahoma, a town itself founded based on strict moral and religious laws by ultra conservative African American men. Mavis, Gigi, Seneca, Lone, Pallas, Save-Marie, and Consolata lead a cast of distinctly diverse women whom all will somehow set the chain of events that will be the cause of their doom, as started by the novel's startling first sentence.

I revisited this book from 2009 when I first read it for a linguistics class in graduate school. Then, I had agreed heavily on the review that Michiko Kakutani had given the novel in 1997. I did not appreciate Morrison's didactic sentences and uneven chapters that delved from the mysterious and ethereal, to extremely short and seemingly swift sentences that seemed like she lost focus in her writing.

Now, I actually appreciate the ambiguity in which she writes, now on par with some of her finest novels. This may be a divisive novel but it will leave readers thinking.

It feels sacrilegious to say anything negative about Toni Morrison's work, when I think that Beloved is the best American novel of the 20th century. Paradise, unfortunately, was confusing, overly crowded with irrelevant characters, and lacking in narrative impulse. And it seems that the story could have had real urgency and powerful characterization, had it been approached another way. A sad disappointment.

While my first attempt at reviewing this title, a task I’m not sure anyone can do justice to, this is not my first reading of the novel. That was many moons ago back in graduate school. Fast forward two decades later and I’m now teaching it to my oldest. I’ve been looking forward to days like this—introducing a deeply layered, complex, literary juicy piece and letting those critical thinking, analytical wheels in the mind begin to turn. If you’ve also never read this, then hopefully I’ll inspire more than one.

In full honesty, I didn’t fall in love with it on my first read. I was sure then that Song of Solomon was my favorite by Morrison, and Paradise hadn’t replaced it. Now, I’m not so sure. It’s different from her previous novels, and doesn’t necessarily wow you at first glance. It takes some digging to dust off murky surface impressions before the luster emerges. So that said, I believe this is one of those books that you have to read more than once. Notice I didn’t say simply twice.



This might be one of those limitless reads because you’ll continue to pick up more pieces of the 10,000 count puzzle that Morrison sort of tosses out on the living room floor, some pieces turned upside down and maybe even an edge or two hiding under the couch, with each read. Given the way that math plays out in the storytelling, it’s likely that a few of the 10,000 pieces are missing and there’s only 9,999 or maybe there’s really 10,005. Regardless, this story is a challenge, one that even some literary scholars and book critics can’t fully put together. A few might even have jammed some wrong pieces. And who knows, possibly only Morrison has the box with the uncut, non disjointed image. But once you start getting enough connections to get some semblance of a picture, the jem that this is will begin to shine through even if like many truths it’s still enshrined in the earth.



If you haven’t guessed, there isn’t a neat little linear plot. It’s not meant to be skimmed. If you read this book in that manner, you surely won’t get it. Nor is it meant to be read simply for surface value or for the story (stories) alone. You can try that and you might still enjoy it, but it’s a tale about what’s underneath the surface….what’s really going on with not just the five displaced women (Mavis, Gigi, Seneca, Pallas, and Connie) who don’t need men or God, who break the mold of acceptable society and decorum to find wholeness, but also the men and the community they offend. In fact, be prepared to get an eclectic, and at times disjointed, history of the town and its residents as it’s interwoven with the arrivals of the women at the Convent—a building that’s sorta a former house of worship, school, and playboy mansion. (Yep, you read that right.)

While the premise (depicted here on Goodreads and on the book’s cover) sets an accurate tone of the tale, imagine it playing out on screen as the lovechild of The Wild Bunch and Lost in an all black Peyton Place.



And then every now and again Morrison throws out some doozy of a moniker or backstory tidbit and it might even feel a little bit like Soap!



Ruby is a second chance town—literally and figuratively, though it’s debatable if some people ever got a first. It was founded by nine families, only seven of which are represented in the children’s Nativity play that’s an amalgamation of town and biblical history after their first safe haven stopped prospering. On what seems to be a daily basis, the town’s elders wax nostalgic about, well, anything and everything that’s not happening in the present. That is except for everyone’s interest in the only spare Morgan heir, manwhore K.D. A marriage to Arnette Fleetwood, who K.D. got pregnant four years before, would appease his twin uncles who are ready for him to settle down; but he really wants Gigi who showed up in town looking for an obscene rock and has never left. Arnette’s best friend, Billie Delia, can’t stand K.D. but she is in love with two brothers, and despite the town’s certainly that she’s hot for a ménage, Billie Delia is purer than Arnette. Billie Delia’s mother is one of only two women in town who the handsome new minister might consider courting, but widow Pat Best is more interested in her town genealogy project filled with convoluted (and in some places incestuous) family trees alongside ‘quiet as its kept’ tidbits about the branches. What’s not quiet is the old reverend who can deliver a fire and brimstone sermon at a wedding sure to make any young couple want to elope, if the youngsters in town weren’t more concerned with hanging out at the Oven that’s only flaming a fire over its faded inscription rather than cooking any meals. Meanwhile, out at the Convent, Connie was blinded by the light, and annoyed with her roommates, has an awakening where art supplies and yoga poses make what has to be some interesting chalk outlines, foreshadowing the carnage that’s to come while at the same time freeing the girls from the pasts that haunts them. When the town men let the seven deadly sins (or definitely five of them) get the best of them, they grab their guns, gum, and sunglasses and let their testosterone take over. It goes down as history usually does. Or does it?



Lost? You might be, but I don’t believe Morrison wrote any of it for shock value. There’s a message and plenty of social commentary littered throughout all that happens, at times almost poetic and lyrical, at times comical. There’s also enough misfortune, heartbreak, and injustice to make you cry from the tragedy of it all, flinch at the ignorance and baseness in people, and seethe when you consider or simply realize that while this story is fiction, it’s also the story of generations and generations of a not so pretty history of not just America but also mankind. There’s enough intrinsic commentary on religion, race, misogyny, gender relations, myth-making, memory, history, hypocrisy, and so much more to make the whole puzzle of it all worth it without hitting you over the head with the heavy themes. While some are blatant like the opening line, others are subtle, and if you fly through the pages too fast you might miss them.

It’s not a book to get hung up on spoilers. After all, Morrison starts the story with the climax. She tells you right off the bat, “They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they take their time.” Who is the white girl?


You never know.
And if another reader tries to tell you they are certain which one it is, they are as unreliable as the narrator of this story.

I’m guilty myself of trying to solve the opening line mystery as well as a few other intriguing ambiguities. Knowing there’s no definite answers maybe even makes me appreciate it all the more. I still look for clues like millions who flock to religion in search of answers even more unattainable. Ah, look what Morrison did there?



But mostly this is about the journey in the pages in between. While the novel starts with the men’s arrival at the Convent for the last time and builds to the how and why their quest for purity and peace becomes tainted, bigoted, and bloodied, this is just as much, if not more, about how the women got where they are, were made what they were, the obstacles that stood in their way, and the ties that bound and the shackles they broke. Even when they are 17 miles from the town, separate from the community and “unequal” they are central to the world around them. And so perhaps it’s about how all women, marginalized and vilified, got where they are and still struggle to ascend in a world where witness testimony, histories, and religious scripture has been twisted to suit those in control much like the Ruby mens’ public proclamations for the slaughter are nothing but smoke screens, pathetic and thinly veiled excuses for the real selfish motivations that drive them to their patriarchal insanity.

“the women are not hiding. They are loose” (287).

For my romance reading friends— If you’re looking for a break from that formulaic but smutastic genre, for something that delivers more substance, this is one to crack open and take a whirl at.

Safety wise….


Well, it’s probably irrelevant because while the book is about love to the extreme, there’s no romance here. Nor is anything romanticized, which is really key. Arguably, there’s also no heroes or heroines. You could ponder through the entire book whether there is a protagonist. Or are there five of them? At least nine are antagonists. Are we getting into Morrison math again? It’s all as head-scratching as who the white girl is. I couldn’t even pass verdict on whether there’s an HEA. It’s like there isn’t…or is there?



There may be no right or wrong answers to the questions your mind will turn over when you start trying to connect the pieces of the intellectual puzzle that is this book. Morrison herself said in an article back in 1998 that she’d rather have readers “grapple with her work than merely revere it.”



And in the vast sea of corruption that has plagued the contemporary romance world, that’s refreshing. It’s also a good reason to give the story a chance. Feel free to hit me up to chat if you do.

*I own a paperback copy of this book. All reviews written by Book-Bosomed Book Blog are honest opinions.

Toni Morrison is not an easy read. At one point I found myself making notes to keep track of the detailed backgrounds of the women. Don't let this deter you from reading this novel, it is thought provoking and the stories of its characters are alive within it's covers.

There are few authors that can make me feel as stupid as Morrison makes me feel time and time again. This novel centers on a small community in rural Oklahoma founded as a safe place for black families that had faced prejudice and a former convent nearly 20 miles away that has become a refuge for broken women. The stories of these women intertwine with the people of the town of Ruby. As the women slowly heal their psychological wounds, the town slowly experiences fractures and tension. Finally, the leading men of the town decide that these women, who do not need men, who flaunt their sexuality and possibly practice witchcraft, is the cause of the town’s problems. Although they manage to destroy the community of women, it is not clear if they destroy the individual women. Of course, this violent act does nothing to heal the town. In this novel, Morrison explores racial hierarchies, the tension between patriarchal systems and feminism, and group cohesion and the fear of the outsider. I found this novel very difficult to follow. Stories wove in and out of one another, the focal point changing without any signal. I know I missed 75% of what was really going on in this book.

So, here I arrive at the later Morrison. Since my introduction to the arts was through rock music, which has adopted Neil Young's "better to burn out than to fade away" dictum as gospel, I had it in my head that artists were supposed to get worse with age, that they were supposed to have this big creative burst at the beginning of their professional career and then lose it all. This ironically doesn't apply to Young himself, who isn't what he used to be but will toss a gem like Ragged Glory or, more recently, Prairie Wind out there every so often. Nor does it apply to other musicians - everyone from Beethoven to Miles Davis dropped a major work late in their artistic development. Filmmakers often take quite some time to mature, and I've come to the realization that novelists don't hit their stride until at least their thirties.

Yet I was still reluctant to approach more recent Toni Morrison, probably because she'd made her name off that initial creative burst that gave us the Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. Those were profound and disturbing and often beautiful works, uniquely American with none of the flag-waving cheez whiz that descriptor usually implies, in that they exposed and discussed and came to complex answers about America's problems and the legacy it's left behind. Good stuff, in other words, but maybe Morrison had set the bar so high with those three that she'd never get back there again. Plus, Jazz was a letdown for me. The descriptions of jazz itself were as good as I've come to expect from Toni's prose, but what was the deal with the main plot, which tried to dress key motifs from Song of Solomon up in new clothes and pass them off as something different? What was the deal with that? So I had it in my head that post-Beloved Morrison was a shadow of the old Morrison, a writer who could still write up a storm but just didn't hit the same notes with the same success.

Welllllll, I was wrong. I'd seen "they shoot the white girl first" on so many lists of great first lines that I had to check out its parent book; that sentence's reputation was so great that I'd come to conclude that Morrison's "big three" was actually a "big four," maybe even a "big five" if you want to count Sula, which makes me wonder what in bluish-green hell Harold Bloom was thinking when he locked Toni Morrison out of his "greatest living authors" shebang. I mean, whatever significance Bloom might've once held for literary criticism, he's basically your old racist uncle at this point. Look at this guy, all his talk of how political correctness is killing everything, I mean it goes to show that Morrison's vision here is RIGHT. This is probably the most overtly feminist novel to come from Morrison, bar maybe the Bluest Eye. In this one, a group of women found their own community, which falls under increasing suspicion from the local all-black community, which has busted out all forms of oppressiveness and conservatism. It looks like these women all laugh and live and learn and grow from each other, which would, let's face it, be kinda goopy.

But no, that's not what's on Toni Morrison's mind at all. There's tension between these women, too! It's like the more people isolate themselves in Morrison's universe, the more they end up hating each other and the less able they are to deal with the fact that they see things differently from one another. It's like we can't live with our differences but can't live without our differences, which makes me wonder: should these characters reintegrate with the communities they've abandoned, or are they better off in this state of isolation? This is some real shit, and if you're going to pull the puke-worthy "well fer fuck's sake just write a pamphlet if you want to get a point across. Just tell the story," as if anything's ever "just" a story, look what she does to these characters. Toni delves into everyone's stories and pulls out this haunted cadre of women, promised so much and granted so little, until they had no choice but to snap and continue to snap. The men, too, are treated with an odd sort of sympathy - if nothing else, Morrison understands where they're coming from and makes us understand it as well.

A titanic work in three hundred pages. Doesn't quite have that same "everything's-possible" feeling as Song of Solomon, but there's no shame in being number two. Harold Bloom can go jump in a freakin' lake.

This is the most complex book I have read from Toni Morrison. It is the story of a black community called Ruby in rural Oklahoma in the 70s and the reaction to a female commune of sorts called the Convent out on the edge of the town. At issue here is skin-tone, the 8-rock dark black founders and their suspicions towards those with lighter skin. The book starts with describing a massacre and then goes back to paint in the details of the lives of the women and the story of the town. The narration is highly variable and not always easy to follow. I realize how important this book is and recognize the wonderful writing, but dropped a star from the lack of fluidity in the reading of the text and the confusion that this entailed.

The book begins rather violently with one of Toni's most powerful opening sentences:
They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. (p. 3)
Morrison discusses her choice of this phrase in the afterward and it definitely leaves an impression on the reader. It sets the expectation of a frenetic pace, although the book does slow down until the last chapter Save-Marie. Each chapter is named after one of the women starting with Ruby, who dies before the story starts and gave her name to the town.

The next chapter Mavis also starts out strong:
The neighbors seemed please when the babies smothered. Probably because the mint green Cadillac in which they died had annoyed them for some time. (p. 21) Mavis' story tragic - spousal abuse and poverty - but she runs away to the Convent to join the handful of women living there where she first meets Connie:
"You all ain't scared out here by yourselves? Don't seem like there's nothing for miles outside."
Connie laughed. "Scary things not always outside. Most scary things is inside." (p. 39)

The next character we meet is Grace, or Gigi:
Either the pavement was burning or she had sapphires hidden in her shoes. (p. 53) On her way to Ruby, her erstwhile train companion wants some ice and the racist salesman wants to charge him a nickel:
"Listen, you. Give him the ice you weren't going to charge me for, okay?"
"Miss, do I have to call the conductor?"
"If you don't, I will. This is train robbery, all right - trains robbing people."
"It's all right," said the man. "Just a nickel."
"It's the principle," said Gigi.
"A five-cent principle ain't no principle at all. The man needs a nickel. Needs it real bad."
(p. 66) Small but meaningful exchanges such as this abound in Morrison's writing always with a little moral in them - here, the price of a principle.

In the next chapter, Seneca, we learn a bit more about Ruby and the residents of the town, the Oven, the scandal around the motto engraved on the Oven (a central piece of their community symbolizing their flight from Reconstruction to Oklahoma and freedom) - "Furrow of His Brow" - and how it came to be interpreted, re-interpreted in the community. What is striking is the many uses to which Morrison puts language. This passage beautifully uses color as a mixed metaphor:
Even now the verbena scent was clear; even now the summer dresses, the creamy, sunlit skin excited him. If he and Steward had thrown themselves off the railing they would have burst into tears. So, among the vivid details of the journey - the sorrow, the stubbornness, the cunning, the wealth - Deek's image of the nineteen summertime ladies was unlike the photographer's. His remembrance was pastel colored and eternal. (p. 110) Seneca is abandoned by her sister and in turns abandons her deadbeat boyfriend in a prison and winds up at the Convent.

The next chapter, Divine, gives us more back story on Ruby and introduces Pallas who the girls at the Convent decide to name Divine after her mother DiDi. Her story is the most tragic of all, although the story of Billie Delia comes close (I found her story with the horse to be very moving). The chapter, however, starts with a sermon from Father Misner of one of the three competing churches in Ruby:
"Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good.
"Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like that. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural than you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God." (p. 141)
This sets the tone for how the religious community will respond to the Convent later in the story although Misner will be horrified by it.

The next chapter goes to one of the more central personalities in Ruby, Patricia, who is obsessed with family trees and old stories. I think it was my favorite chapter, perhaps because the narrative shifts were far less violent, but also because the language is perfectly beautiful: as she tries to glean more information about the families, the people of Ruby clam up:
Things got out of hand when she asked to see letters and marriage certificates. The women narrowed their eyes before smiling and offering to refresh her coffee. Invisible doors closed, and the conversation turned to weather. (p. 187) It is also in this chapter that we learn her theory about black on black racism. The original founders of Ruby were a deep black color that she uses the mining term 8-rock (the deepest, darkest level of the mine) for. Trying to keep the purity of their black blood, the founders tended to look down at lighter skin tones. Later, this has catastrophic consequences for the Convent (Remember that first line?) Later, in a conversation with Reverend Misner,
You're wrong, and that's your field you're plowing wet. Slavery is our past. Nothing can change that, certainly not Africa."
"We live in the world, Pat. The whole world. Separating us, isolating us - that's always been their weapon. Isolation kills generations. It has no future."
"You think they don't love their children?"
Misner stroked his upper lip and heaved a long sigh. "I think they love them to death." (p. 210)

The Convent is run by Consolata, the subject of the next chapter. In the good clean darkness of the cellar, Consolata woke to the wrenching disappointment of not having died the night before. (p. 221). She is the last of the nuns that once populated the Convent. Her wine cave is well-stocked and she serves as a guru and muse to the women that come live at the Convent. She falls in love with one of the community founders (who is married of course) in their respective youth: Speeding toward the unforseeable, sitting next to him, who was darker than the darkness they split, Consolata let the feathers unfold and come unstuck from the walls of a stone-cold womb. Out here where wind was not a help or a threat to sunflowers, nor the moon a language of time, of weather, of sowing or harvesting, but a feature of the original world designed for the two of them." (p. 229). Unfortunately for Consolata, her lover dumps her and returns to his family.

The next to last chapter is about one of the other Ruby residents that has had limited contact with the Convent, Lone. Toni saves the last chapter, Save-Marie, for the massacre scene announced in the opening line and its dreadful consequences. The book ends with several of the women survivors and returns to a metaphor of Piedade which was introduced earlier in the book. I found the closing paragraph quite beautiful: When the ocean heaves sending rhythns of water ashore, Piedade looks to see what has come. Another ship, perhaps, but different, heading to port, crew and passengers, lost and saved, atremble, for they have been disconsolate for some time. Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise. (p. 318)

As I said earlier, this is definitely not one of Morrison's easier works, but it is still rewarding and merits several reads to get all the layers that she was laid down here.

Fino's Toni Morrison Reviews:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song Of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise

...three and a half stars, to be precise. Hard to compete with my all time favourite "Beloved".