I don't understand how Morrison is able to write a novel with so many stories intertwined, with so many themes, issues, so much history, and still remain lyrical and arresting with her words.

She is too good at this... (check out http://ZoraToniMaya.tumblr.com for full review)

Paraíso, la historia de cinco mujeres viviendo bajo dos techos: el de un antiguo convento y el del pueblo de Ruby; un lugar inexistente y atrasado. Un lugar regido por hombres. Hombres con un incontrolado poder de control que tenían la desfachatez de decidir qué podía ser y qué no podía ser. Hombres que solo ven a las mujeres como santas o como putas. Hombres movidos por su ignorancia.
Es dura, acabas el libro con rabia y pena pero es necesaria.
Resumo todo en seis palabras: hay que leer a Toni Morrison.

I'm not giving this book any stars because, to be honest, I don't really understand what I just read! There were moments of beauty in this book -- pearls of exquisite writing -- but I just could not follow the story line let alone make sense of the greater meaning. I'll be discussing this with some friends who I hope can enlighten me!

A magnificent novel that shouldn't still be relevant in 2020.

Paradise is about an isolated black rural community in Oklahoma, founded as a refuge from the racist mainland. The town is ninety miles from anywhere, and the geographical distance goes a long way in helping the community alienate itself from the anxiety and sheer danger of being black in America. The natives of the town do not have to be afraid of random lynchings, do not have to be subject to suspicious eyebrows everywhere they go, do not have to endure the treatment as second class citizens in their own country, do not have to witness the staggering inequality, disdain and injustice that America reserves for people of colour. To quote a repeated occurrence in the book - they do not have to wipe the spit off their children's faces.

Black towns sprang up everywhere across the US once slavery was abolished. Millions of black people were afoot, trying to merge into already existent settlements or forming groups to establish new towns. Once formed, some of these towns became insular and discouraged the newly arrived people from taking up residence there. Some light-skinned people began to shun dark skinned 'blue-black' Americans. The town in question, Ruby, is founded by a group of families who were refused entry in many such towns because of the colour of their skins. This past rejection by the other blacks hangs forever heavy in the minds of its citizens, and shapes its public consciousness. As the town grows increasingly successful, its cultural isolation and intolerance of outsiders grow exponentially and it reaches a point where its most influential men develop a God Complex and plan a mass murder of non-conformists.

I've tried reading Toni Morrison in the past, but I was always put off by her cryptic prose and I tired of deciphering meaning from her sentences. Beloved and Paradise were the two books I had attempted reading earlier. I picked this up again without much hope and I was surprised when I struck a chord with the prose this time. It was a dazzling experience and I now understand why Morrison is considered such a legend.

Non-linear narrative is employed to a great effect here and it is one of the most natural non-linear narratives I've encountered so far. It is very impressive the way Toni Morrison selectively reveals and withholds information, stacking characters, backstories and events in a sophisticated spire, masterfully creating tension and sustaining suspense. All the technical sophistry did not impede my emotional attachment with the book. The success of Ruby as a town was as exhilarating to me as the past failures of the founding fathers were heartbreaking. I found myself rooting for the town to get more prosperous, but the clouds of premonition from the very beginning made me nervous. I tried frequently to calm myself down as I imagined possible destruction scenarios for the town.

Needless to mention, Morrison's writing is fabulous and some of her phrasing and lyrical descriptions are drop-dead gorgeous. The town's geography and its seasons are extremely well-described. The story is narrated from alternating perspectives of people from different families in the town. Past and present crash against each other in the minds of these characters, and we cross decades in a couple pages. An aura of mystery lingers around each character, and it doesn't help whenever Morrison chooses to be deliberately vague about some of the details. It is never revealed who the White Girl is, who gets shot in the first sentence (Her point is that race shouldn't matter, but it sometimes diverts our attention from the actual narrative).

The novel begins with a shooting at the Convent, which is located some 17 miles from the town of Ruby. Slowly uncoils the tale of the town, how it came to be founded, the town that preceded this one, the families who make up the town, their stories, culture and prejudices. History looms mighty under the skies in Ruby, and the ancestors of its founders are held in extremely high regard. When this palpable remembrance of history brushes against the tides of the present, complications blossom. Martin Luther King has been recently assassinated, and the youngsters of Ruby want to be a part of the larger black sociocultural movement. The elders desire Ruby to be frozen in the past, and they are not ready to let time enter their town lest it sway the hearts and minds of its youngsters. They want to distance themselves from the larger black population and have nothing but cold shoulders to offer the new movement. The youngsters are interested in their African roots but the elders disapprove. Intergenerational tensions arise, pitting the elders driven by fear of God against the next generation who have no use for fear. This excessive devotion to God instills a dangerous notion of moral superiority in the minds of the townspeople who become the very embodiment of oppression, patriarchy and bigotry that denied them their basic human rights a century earlier.

I love reading about newly forming towns and the evolution of Ruby from a barren hinterland to a prosperous town was intriguing. Hierarchies muscle up from thin air. Racial purity is revered. The very exclusion from other black communities motivates it to grow prosperous, and this reactive hostility is taken to the extremes and darkens into a racism of sorts. Patricia's chapter threw some much needed light on the interrelationships between Ruby's families and exposed their hypocrisies. Toni Morrison captures the rhythm and tensions of small town life with perfect precision.

Religion plays an important role in the town of Ruby and there are 4 churches in this little town of 300. I would have expected people who suffer mind-numbing injustice on a daily basis to vehemently reject the concept of God. But God is embraced passionately and religion treated with the utmost reverence. Deviations in faith are not tolerated and everyone is expected to adhere to the moral and spiritual boundaries prescribed by religion. Religion is the single source of hope for the denizens of Ruby, and they believe God to be their ultimate protector. Ruby's success is attributed to His protection. Nobody dares to raise their voice against the religious oppression and religion preserves patriarchy fresh.

The convent stands as a symbol for all that organized religion fears: a peaceful haven from the relentlessly judgemental outside world. It mostly shelters women who are wronged by/don't belong in the outside world, and they live freely without a care. It is more of a Paradise than the town of Ruby, and it's more likeable despite the sinister overtones. I wanted these women to live there peacefully forever, but of course, they had to shoot the white girl first. The supernatural weight laid on the convent didn't sit well with me; if it was metaphorical, I found it a clumsy one. The supernatural element seemed like an easy exit. A lazy way to resolve things. The turn of events in the last 3-4 chapters were abrupt and the whole Connie story was hastily executed.

When reading writers of great stature, the expectations are so enormous that reality almost never matches up to it. But, in Paradise, Toni Morrison has produced a masterful novel about the evolution of communities and anxiety surrounding newfound power. It has a narrow range of flaws dotting its horizon, but that only stresses its otherwise brilliant allure. This will leave you hungry for her other novels.

Although this is billed as the third part of the “Beloved” trilogy, the stories are not related and in my opinion, don’t necessarily follow a theme that’s immediately clear; in my opinion, her second novel, “Sula”, has a much stronger connection to this book. Furthermore, it can be very difficult to follow because there are a lot of characters and the townspeople of Ruby have such a convoluted intertwined relationship, along with nicknames, that it’s hard to remember who’s who at times, the same as in the Convent, the house where the violence is focused. (Since that’s how the book starts, “They shoot the white girl first,” that’s no spoiler.) Nevertheless, there are surprising themes in this book and not all of them are racial; race is a part of it but that’s missing the forest for the trees, I think.

The two focal points are the town of Ruby and the Convent, both isolated refuges from the outside world, in a desolate spot in Oklahoma. Ruby is an all-black town, begun by a group of men who forged their way in the late 19th century in an attempt to escape from a white man’s world of prejudice and danger, to put it simply, slowly moving further west until founding Ruby, a mostly self-sufficient town with little or no contact with the outside world beyond the men going off to foreign wars and most of them coming back to their isolated, insulated community – but you can’t keep the world out forever. For me, this is the first universal theme because there’s no community anywhere, try as it might, that can keep out the world because the world will find it, through its messengers, the young people who come and leave, and the young people usually have their own ideas, so the elders who founded and isolated the town after World War II now find in the post-Vietnam era are challenged by young blacks influenced by the death of Martin Luther King and the Black Power movement; as usual, the young people want change and aren’t about to abide their elders and the older people want everything to stay the same and for the young people to mind their manners and places in the town. Nothing new here and nothing you can’t find in many other parts of the world.

The Convent was originally built by a gambler as a sort of house of sin, which he quickly lost and which was then taken over by a Catholic order who sought to educate Native Americans but as funds ran out and nuns died off or were reassigned, there remained one nun and one orphan girl – and then came other women, one by one, who needed to escape and found refuge there, forming a community of women. In this sense, they have more in common with Ruby than the men want to think because the women of Ruby find not only some food supplies there but shelter and solidarity from the cruelty of the town; the men resent the Convent for giving the women refuge from their actions but have no problem finding other purposes for the women – which, of course is the women’s fault, not theirs. Nothing new.

This is the fundamental story for me, a resistance to inevitable change, a blindness to the effect all this internecine living has brought about – one family has four children born with serious birth defects but the question of inbreeding never crosses their minds – and the final resort, scapegoating the women for all the problems they’ve brought on themselves. Again, not a particularly racial issue but race runs through it; even if at least two of the women at the Convent are black, there is a devilment going on.

As I say, it’s not an easy book to read – Toni Morrison’s books never are because they are so full of imagery that sometimes it’s hard to take all in - but it’s powerful. It may be necessary to put it aside for another time but I think it’s worth the trouble. It requires a lot of concentration and attention due to the layers on layers of currents flowing through the story but I think it’s worth the time if you have the time to invest. If you’ve never read Toni Morrison, I wouldn’t start here but if you have then this will be one more magical journey for you.

I enjoy reading Toni Morrison. Out of the five books I have read so far, I think Paradise is the finest, deepest and best-developed. This novel narrates the parallel stories of numerous characters whose lives are intertwined together by hardships, slavery and emancipation, oppression and hope for a better future. The black community of Ruby is patriarchally governed and it is comprised of (third?-generation) black people who shut out white supremacy, brown-skinned disgrace and anything out of black tradition. Ruby residents' pride is so bold and pronounced that after a point they cannot abide the independence of four mystified women who inhabit the Convent, a mansion several miles away from their purified community. So nine of the most powerful men act arbitrarily as leaders and invade the Convent in a seeming attempt to protect their town that is threatened by the women's looseness but in reality all they act out from is personal interest and thirst for vengeance.

Apart from the distinctive lyricism, what I liked most in the novel was the discreet way with which the issue of colourism was approached, as well as-paradoxically-its discouraging complexity. Morrison has written a book about race by refusing explicitly to speak about race. Interestingly, the novel's impressive opening line is "They shoot the white girl first" but the reader is never let know throughout the storyline which of the five girls was the white one. Then, Morrison has again opted for multiple narratives only this time the characters are outrageously many and it is difficult to keep track of who is who and to whom related. And yet the deep, poetic language she uses compensates the reader for her demand of him/her for constant alertness. Under different circumstances I would have given up the reading because it truly exhausted me. Now, however, all I can think about is when to make some time to read it again and absorb more details and secrets. I may be biased, but I frankly believe there is no other author with Morrison's clarity and artistic vision. She is one-of-a-kind.

From very, very many perspectives, Toni Morrison in her novel ‘Paradise’ makes a sort of reconstruction of the social motives and religious drives of inhabitants of Ruby which have led to an act of violence described at the start of the novel. She does that eloquently, and somewhat mysterious en poetical. She demands quite some concentration from her readers, and she doesn’t support the reader very much in seeking the connections between the fragmented narrative. And the reader needs a ‘wide span of control’, meaning that there are very, very many characters, who play their more or less significant role, while the main ‘character’ is not a person, in my opinion not even Ruby (the small place in Oklahoma, where the story takes place), but let me guess: the abstraction behind the tension that is caused by female independence outside the frame of a patriarchal society.
Many thing could be said about the motives in the novel, like the matter of being free from white legislation: can a small society survive when it comes to enforceing their own values; and what if one can easily think differently about moral values … - to mention just one.
So I had a hard time grasping the depth, yet recognizing a certain message and literary quality. JM
PS
It has taken me over two months to finish this novel. That was only partly due to the novel. Partly because some other, easier, reads seduced me (a Biggles adventure; a short novella; a Danish thriller; a novel by Pamuk). And partly because my mother needed more time and attention than before – he has dementia; ten days ago professionals have taken over most of the direct attention my mother needs in her mental state, she is far more at ease now.
Daily more then a dozen telephone calls during the last couple of months have not been a good combination with (concentrated) reading. And I have a brother and two sisters who helped me daily in reassuring our mother that everything is ok.
Hence the relatively low number of books I’ve read in 2017.

Terminar este libro el día internacional de la mujer tiene todo el sentido del mundo.

Το τρίτο βιβλίο της Τόνι Μόρισον που διαβάζω.

Λέγεται πως είναι το πιο δύσκολό της.

Κατακερματισμένη πλοκή και μελίρρυτη γραφή.

Το τελευταίο βιβλίο της τριλογίας.

Μια τριλογία όσο αφορά το κοινό θέμα (αγάπη) κι όχι κοινό ήρωα και ιστορία.

Στην Αγαπημένη η αγάπη είναι η άνευ όρων αγάπη μάνας προς το παιδί της. Διαδραματίζεται μετά τον Αμερικανικό Εμφύλιο (1865), εποχή που ακόμη υπήρχαν μαύροι σκλάβοι.

Στο Τζαζ η αγάπη είναι η παθιασμένη αγάπη παντρεμένου προς την ερωμένη του.
Διαδραματίζεται την εποχή της Τζαζ και της Μαύρης Αναγέννσηης του Χάρλεμ (1922).

Στον Παράδεισο η αγάπη είναι η παράλογη αγάπη πιστού προς τον Θεό.
Διαδραματίζεται την δεκαετία του 1970 τα χρόνια που ο φυλετικός διαχωρισμός ήταν πλέον αντισυνταγματικός.

Έξυπνος είναι ο τρόπος που ξεκινά το βιβλίο η Μόρισον: Πυροβόλησαν το λευκό κορίτσι πρώτο. Με τις άλλες θα έπαιρναν τον χρόνο τους.
Αυτή η πρώτη σκηνή του μακελειού θα μείνει ανολοκλήρωτη μέχρι το τελευταίο μέρος του βιβλίου.

Θα πάμε πίσω στο χρόνο να μάθουμε ποια είναι τα θύματα και ποιοι οι θύτες.
Φυσικά θα αφήσει στην κρίση μας για το ποια είναι η λευκή: η πλούσια; η κακεντρεχής; η μητέρα;

Το ίδιο τρικ έκανε και στο μοναδικό της διήγημα Recitatif όπου αφαίρεσε όλους τους φυλετικούς κώδικες και χαρακτηριστικά από τις δύο πρωταγωνίστριες κάτι που βάζει τον αναγνώστη στην παγίδα να πει ότι η κοπέλα με καριέρα είναι η λευκή, και η αποτυχημένη σερβιτόρα με τα χοντρά χείλη η μαύρη.

Θα συνεχίσω να διαβάζω κι άλλα της Μόρισον, έστω κι αν η γραφή της δεν είναι και η πιο εύκολη.

Paradise, the third book in the Beloved trilogy by Toni Morrison was a searing exploration into the lives of black people after the abolishment of slavery in the antebellum south. Ms. Morrison, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prizes for Literature, states she was eager to manipulate and control metaphoric language. In her words:

n  

"Exclusivity, however is still an attractive, even compelling feature of paradise because so many people--the unworthy--are not there. Boundaries are secure, watchdogs, security systems, and gates are there to verify the legitimacy of the inhabitants. Such enclaves separate from crowded urban areas of proliferate. Thus it does not seem possible or desirable for a city to be envisioned let alone built in which poor people can be accommodated. Exclusivity is not just a realized dream for the wealthy; it is a popular yearning of the middle class."

"Other than outwitting evil, waging war against the unworthy, there seems to be nothing for the inhabitants of paradise to do. An open, borderless, come-one-come-all paradise, without dread, minus a nemesis is no paradise at all."

n

This novel draws from the rich history of all-black towns in Oklahoma subsequent to the Civil War and black Americans receiving the right to vote and other rights of citizenship such as property ownership. It is during this time that the novel explores the founding of an all-black town in Oklahoma named "Haven" that thrived until the aftermath and struggles of two world wars. At this point it was decided to move on and found a new all-black town named "Ruby," after a black woman who had lost her life during childbirth, in part due to the refusal of medical care because she was black.

The novel finds its heart in the attempts by various groups to find a paradise as they seek an isolated and self-sufficient idyllic existence away from the racism of the outside world. However, the Convent now a haven for lost women at the edge of Ruby, becomes an issue for the founding families of Ruby as they see it and what it represents as a threat to their community. The book is divided into nine chapters, each telling the background of various women in the convent as well as the many connections to the people of Ruby. As with all Toni Morrison's writing, you just have to give yourself up to her talented, beautiful and sometimes haunting prose. As we witness more of the women's stories, one becomes aware that all may not be as well as the town's leaders portray. There is a always a powerful message in her books, Paradise being no exception.

Yeah, this is one of the best books I ever read. I will say that I was in awe of the level of craftsmanship and mastery displayed in this novel. Intellectually, I was absolutely engaged and inspired. Emotionally, not as much. Hence, the 4.5 stars.

I've read most of Morrison's novels and this is my absolute favourite. Why? Because it does the most spine-tingling, thrilling thing with structure it's ever been my pleasure to witness.

In the first 30 pages, we are treated to a mysterious, myopic scene. No explanation, just the scene. That's the calm eye of the hurricane. The rest of the novel spins you out further and further from the eye and into the storm so that you can see (and understand) more and more and more of what was actually going on in those first 30 pages.

At the end, when you reach the outer rim, the final swirl, of the hurricane and the full horror of that initial scene is revealed, you can only applaud the stylistic craft of it. It left me in awe, rather like Faulkner's structures leave me in awe (regardless of the story they tell).

For those who like a linear plot or who want to be able to understand everything as they go: this one is not for you. If you tend to like more experimental things, this give this one a go.