I've never been able to pinpoint the reason I love this book.

After three reads, endless highlights, dog-eared pages, and notes in the margins I've found peace with Ruby and its inhabitants.

Many think this book failed because Morrison tried to insert too many questions, themes, and allegory into it, but I think that's where it shines. Morrison's depth is downright impressive in her ability to weave such weighted layers in this novel.

On my first read I came out with a tenuous understanding of what happened out there in Oklahoma. I understood clearly that power corrupts those who thought themselves incorruptible; there will always be those who throw stones from glass houses; and women need a safe space to unburden themselves of things they didn't even know they carried. She masterfully illustrates how convention, fear, and most importantly shame obscure our eyes from truth by paralleling the Convent women and the townspeople of Ruby.

On my third read I ended up focusing on the different forms of pride and the consequences of living a reactionary life. There is just so much to be taken away from this book.

Additionally, a nuanced understanding of race only supplements the book, it doesn't make or break it. An outstanding feat, though it's something that seems everyday for a writer like Morrison. Race was central in the foundation of the plot, but not the understanding of the people, how much more American can you get?

Reread

I’d already started my reread of this novel, whose opening sentences are They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time., (of course, the “they” are men) when the March 26 metro-Atlanta killings occurred. I had the thought that I might have chosen an inopportune time to be reading this, but my second thought was when is the murder of women by men with guns (at least in the U.S.) not happening.

When I first read this at its time of publication, I think my focus was more on the backstories of the women who live in the so-called Convent and what led each one of them there. I might not have had the vocabulary then to describe one of its major themes, but I'm sure I intuited it. This time that theme was a focus for me: the denunciation of the aims and motives of the so-called righteousness of a patriarchy.

I have one lingering question, and theory, about Lone’s role near the end of the book that I will put in spoiler tags in the comments section. I haven’t seen it addressed anywhere, so perhaps I am making too much of it.

This is not an easy book, in all senses of that adjective; but with both my readings, I lingered over its last pages. Not because of any difficulty, though there was some, but because of Morrison’s language, which always pulls me through, which is somehow always comforting, even when it leaves me bereft as it overwhelms my heart.

Sometimes you have to hold up your hands as a reader and admit maybe you didn’t do a book justice. I found Paradise really difficult to follow. Mainly this is due to there being no central character. The central character instead is a town called Ruby where only blacks live and are free of white legislation and a nearby building known as the convent. The awfulness of men and magical prowess of women is its theme. Well not quite but the divisions drawn here are not between blacks and whites but between men and women. The men drawing their inspiration from the past, the women much more inclined to look forward.

I’d be interested to know how many characters there are in this novel. I would guess about a hundred and they all have significance which for me meant Morrison was asking too much of the reader. No doubt a novelist lives obsessively in the novel she’s writing. As a reader this isn’t the case. We have the rest of our life to get on with every day. If a character who has only had two lines reappears after a hundred pages it’s almost cruel to expect us to remember him or her. And yet if we don’t remember them here we are punished, shoved out of the narrative. To fully appreciate this novel I’d guess you’d have to read it in three sittings. Unfortunately I was only managing to read about twenty pages a day. On top of that I wasn’t really convinced by any of the characters.

At the beginning, a lynch party of men set out with guns and various other weapons to put an end to the reign of a few mysterious women living in the building outside the town. A witch hunt in other words. The men have managed to convince themselves these women are ungodly. The novel then goes backwards in time to document both the history of the small town of Ruby and the various women who have ended up at the convent. There’s some cleverness in the construction of this novel – I liked how it turns full circle which does create a lot of intrigue - but there’s also a good deal of clumsiness. For starters the characters aren’t particularly memorable with perhaps one or two exceptions. A lot of them, especially the men, seemed interchangeable. Neither is the prose as haunting and exalted as Morrison’s usual fare. So though I felt I didn’t do it justice I can still say with conviction it’s no Beloved. In fact it’s my least favourite of the Morrison novels I’ve read.