Will I love Paradise?

The opening line to this book is literally one for the ages – if there’s one thing that Ms. Morrison knew how to do, it was to keep you gripped right from the very beginning. And the intrigue that the opening inspires continues throughout the book.

I love a layered story – with different entry points, perspectives, and histories wrapped up into one beautifully written package. I felt completely entangled in the small world of the town of Ruby and it’s many inhabitants, the people felt real, they rose off the page (the audio-page) and spoke to me in my… show more.

Morrison’s most ambitious and most underrated novel, Paradise (1997) tells the story of Ruby, a town founded by a group of African-Americans turned away after slavery from other black townships because of their darker skin color. Ruby’s male leaders accordingly establish a patriarchal community devoted to keeping bloodlines pure and youth in line. This stern society inevitably clashes with the inhabitants of a former convent on its fringes where a multiracial group of fugitive women come together amid the tumult of the 1960s. In this intensely written and kaleidoscopically structured violent epic, Morrison rewrites the Biblical Exodus and the American… show more.