Paradise – Toni Morrison

We convened at Dick Malmquist’s house on Saturday, July 8, 2023. Renee proposed this book by Toni Morrison. It’s the second Toni Morrison book we’ve read as a group (the other: A Mercy). Renee is an unabashed Toni fan. Many of us found the book riveting and lyrical. It’s long for us: 318 pages. We debated its rank in the Morrison oeuvre. We learned more of her biography this time around – an incredible artist and editor she was. An important work, with religious overtones and a dramatic finale. Not everyone appreciated the lengthy story or its surreal ending. We discussed some amazing individual passages.

Goodreads says this:

Toni Morrison’s first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Paradise opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, 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.