"They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are seventeen miles from a town which has ninety miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent, but there is time and the day has just begun."
Morrison attacks the imagination with her first three sentences. The opening scene is filled with a Faulknerian suspense promising not only "in-your-face" action, but a novel that stuns the senses.
"Paradise," is Morrison's final book in a trilogy that began in 1987 with "Beloved," and her 1992, "Jazz." To date, Morrison has won the National Book Award, (1977 "Song of Solomon), a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for "Beloved," and in 1993, she was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Prince University.
The violence men inflict on women and the painful irony of an "all-black" town in whose citizens themselves become oppressors are the central themes of Morrison's symphonic seventh novel. Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking "Paradise" is a feminist novel. It isn't. According to a recent interview on the Oprah show, Morrison does not do "ist" books. She writes to the human condition and she doesn't blink at hard truths.
"Rumors had been whispered for more than a year. Outrages that had been accumulating all along took shape as evidence. A mother was knocked down the stairs by her cold-eyed daughter. Four damaged infants were born in one family . . . Brides disappeared on their honeymoons. Two brothers shot each other on New Year's Day . . . And what went on at the Oven these days was not to be believed. The proof they had been collecting since the terrible discovery in the spring could not be denied: the one thing that connected all these catastrophes was in the Convent. And in the Convent were those women."
Although the novel begins in 1976, it covers a period of one hundred years. Morrison gives the story of these people who settled in Ruby, Oklahoma from the time the freemen came from the south into Oklahoma territory.
There were nine large intact families who made the original journey, who were thrown out of Fairly, Oklahoma because of the color of their skins. They moved on and founded Haven and Ruby. The family names were legend: Blackhorse, Morgan, Poole, Fleetwood, Beauchamp, Cato, Flood and both DuPres. With their siblings, wives, and children there were 79 or 81 in all depending on whether the two stolen children were counted. You meet them all and you learn the meaning, of paradise.
Morrison says, "People's anticipation now for linear, chronological stories is intense because that's the way narrative is revealed in TV and movies. But we experience life as the present moment, the anticipation of the future and a lot of slices of the past." In her now familiar style, Morrison takes you from the present, to two steps into the future, and five steps back to the past, but not always in that order. This makes the reading a complex experience.
You can't scan or skim over pages in "Paradise" or you will be hopelessly lost. Full attention is required in order to capture the nuances of each character presented, and there are so many characters, losing your way in their stories becomes all too easy. In the words of one of the women, "Come prepared or not at all . . ." Be ready to confront questions as old as humankind itself, or you'll come away from "Paradise" bewildered.
It is my opinion that "Paradise" should not be read as an ethnic story. This is a tale for all men and women regardless of their race. Morrison is a breathtaking risk taker and she'll keep you fearfully turning the pages.
If you want to understand Toni Morrison, read her books. She is a great American writer and we are blessed by her and her immense talent.
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(Jones is a published writer, & a literary critic for The Tulsa World newspaper)
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