Like the first two book in the Beloved trilogy, Beloved and Jazz, the overarching themes of Paradise are coping with loss and pain; powerful, toxic memories; loss of innocence; and a more nuanced examination of female empowerment in the context of the legacy of slavery. The more granular themes in this third novel are hatred, love, and a kind of NIMBY sensibility.

Unfortunately, I liked this book the least of the three and was disappointed that the almost magical lyricism of the first novel and, to a lesser extent, the second novel, was absent in this one despite the oft pretty prose. The story focuses on fifteen families over five generations in an all-Black Oklahoma town, Ruby, which actively excludes outsiders. It begins when armed men from Ruby search a convent some miles out of town for five women who they believe are immoral and pose a threat to the harmony in Ruby. The story that follows focuses on explaining who those men are and why their intended victims were brought to the convent in the first instance. The chapters are named after different women, and told through various narrators, some more reliable than others. in reality, the women are a scapegoat for Ruby’s own intergenerational conflict. I did like Morrison’s character development, but I found in this novel there was more telling than showing, unlike the first novel. The themes Morrison wove like magic threads into a sturdy tapestry with seamless subtlety in Beloved seemed to have devolved into an explicit bludgeon. I even examined my reaction for, perhaps, some visceral reaction to the citizens of this all-Black town becoming oppressors, and I do not believe it was that. It is just that I recently read Beloved and Jazz, and this one did not measure up, to my great disappointment.
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“Paradise is defined by those who can’t get in.” - Toni Morrison

I have felt with all Toni Morrison’s books, that I would really benefit from re-reading them. In the case of Paradise, I feel a re-reading is essential.

I think this is a very sophisticated novel, and if I am able to draw more satisfying conclusions on a second read, than I will have learned a lot, but at this moment I am a frustrated reader who was just bested by a book. The only thing I know for sure right now is that Paradise as a concept, is a paradox.

In the Foreward to Paradise Toni Morrison writes, "The idea of paradise is no longer imaginable or, rather, it is over-imagined which amounts to the same thing . . ." It is that idea of a definition of paradise that perhaps began as a garden available to all and with each generation turned into a place defined by separation, exclusion, judgment, a place where the symbols that once brought a community together have lost their original meaning.

In the town of Ruby, Oklahoma there are a range of definitions of Paradise that divide the town between generations, genders, through colorism and between places. And those confliction notions are what erupt in violence.

This is Toni Morrison's theology on display taking place with the backdrop of American history, a story that shares much in common with the Book of Judges with its cycle of drifting away, encountering trauma, calling out and redemption, angst over who belongs in the promised land -- and a people, generations after a great Exodus, still trying to keep/understand a covenant that has changed in many of the minds of the community.

This is a challenging book to read with a greater expanse of characters (also like Judges) than most Morrison novels, but so worth making it to the end for one of the best pieces of magical realism that pulls the story into a coherent whole. ( )

The story opens in 1976. A group of men is converging upon the Convent, a repurposed mansion at the edge of the town of Ruby, Oklahoma. They intend harm to the women living there. The narrative then shifts to follow various unrelated characters. These individual stories, when combined, provide a unified whole. We learn of the founding of the all-black town, and the building of the Oven, a central place to prepare food (which serves as an important symbol). We learn the backstories of the women in the Convent, how they arrived, and why they stayed. The patriarchy blames these “wayward” women for misleading town’s younger generation.

Though it is technically part of a trilogy, including Beloved and Jazz, it can be read as a standalone. A short summary can hardly do it justice. As in many of Morrison’s novels, it explores themes related to women’s issues, racial conflict, social structure, and psychology. It comments on the gender discrimination that occurred within black communities during the Civil Rights Movement. There are many interwoven threads, critiques of American history, and spiritual references. It is well-crafted, complex, and thought-provoking.
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"Born out of an old hatred, one that began when one kind of black man scorned another kind and that kind took the hatred to another level, their selfishness had trashed two hundred years of suffering and triumph in a moment of such pomposity and error and callousness it froze the mind."
After the civil war, many blacks built communities where whites need not apply. But many required that you show up with your own resources--in other words, "don't ask for any help." Ruby, Oklahoma, a community of"dark-skinned" black folks, population 360, in the time frame of this book's setting, was begun as town where folks helped each other with what They needed. But now Ruby is set to implode from its problems. Adding to the town's ills, the nearby Convent, a house originally occupied by nuns "educating" Indian girls (read: taken from their communities to be "whitened") but now home to the Portuguese woman who herself was stolen as a child and brought up to serve the nuns. Several young women have found their way there, and ended up staying. When they show up at a wedding in Ruby, it's the spark that ignites the smoldering undercurrents.
I love this author's lovely way with words. ( )