Toni Morrison-Paradise (Knopf)
"Surely there will be shelter in the convent."
With Paradise, Morrison's eagerly awaited post-Nobel effort, Morrison returns to the same subjects and hard-hitting commentary that have garnered respect across the country and around the world.
Don't be fooled: Morrison never promises or reaches paradise in her novel. Rather, paradise is something for which we continually strive but never truly can find.
Like she does in Beloved, Morrison uses tone as a mercurial tool, moving it back and forth to tell her story-not chronologically-but as the history becomes important to the present.
But unlike Beloved, Paradise does not employ the stream-of-consciousness monologues that give any linearly-oriented readers fits.
Set in 1976, the novel chronicles the rise (and fall?) of Ruby, an all-black township in rural Oklahoma-named for the first citizen who died in the journey to the new town. Already the novel assumes a duality of perspectives, a complex hybrid of past and present. When pertinent, the book also tells the story of Haven, Ruby's predecessor. Haven's story is that of an exodus, but Ruby's story is hardly that of a genesis.
While Haven's people certainly left to create their own slice of paradise, they didn't find it right away. The dark-skinned settlers who once held offices during Reconstruction, were forced out by lighter-skinned blacks with a superiority complex. During their journey, the settlers were turned away from town after town because of their dark-as-coffee skin.
Paralleling the town is the Convent, originally an all-girls school on the outskirts of Ruby. Each of it's inhabitants were outcasts who found a home in the warmth and harmony of the Convent.
Time is fluid in the novel, years lap over one another like ocean tides. That makes Paradise a sometimes complicated and frustrating experience, forcing the reader to consult certain passages time and again in order to make sense of the seamless collage of time.
As Morrison blends past with present, she sets the historical and emotionally charged stage for the conflict that is brewing in Ruby.
A new minister in town brings fresh ideas, such as freedom and restlessness, to the town's youth. His presumptive behavior bothers the elders, who strive to keep Ruby under their own control-the same as it's been since its inception.
In her narrative, Morrison is unafraid of exploring, or even exploiting, race and gender relationships as they relate to Ruby and its impending demise.
A dearth of female protagonists in the novel reflect Morrison's conceptual intentions. Ruby's women are almost faceless, without identities; they are no more than their hackneyed roles as baby factories and dinner-makers. As long as they make no trouble, they'll get none in return. In fact, these women are quasi-protagonists, in that they attempt the right move, however, at the wrong time.
On the other end of the gender spectrum, Ruby's men are quick to judge any stranger that walks into town. White folks passing through are "[B]orn lost. Take over the world and still lost. Right, Reverend?"
Morrison's careful portraits of the Convent women and their executioners reflect her desire to have the reader treat each of the characters as flawed and ultimately human. While the story's cast is large, each individual portrayal is intimate and subtly invasive in the quest for palpable, unforgettable characters.
Complex relationships, racial and gender conflicts and fatally flawed reasoning sound far from edenic. But nothing in Paradise is one-dimensional or easily judged. It may require a second or even third read, but as Morrison once said, "That, my dear, is called reading!"
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