Toni Morrison writes about a group of African Americans who found a community in Oklahoma called Ruby. When the outside world threatens the peace of the community, five women whose lives are particularly troubled take refuge in an abandoned convent, which alienates the men of the town. In this novel, which pits men against women and presents women as victims, the result is violence--but not despair. In the end, Morrison remains hopeful. A "New York Times" Notable Book for 1998.

They shoot the white girl first.

"'Paradise'...addresses the same great themes of her 1987 masterpiece, 'Beloved': the loss of innocence, the paralyzing power of ancient memories and the difficulty of accepting loss and change and pain. It, too, deals with the blighted legacy of slavery. It, too, examines the emotional and physical violence that human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another. And it, too, suggests that redemption is to be found not in obsessively remembering the past but in letting go. Unfortunately, 'Paradise' is everything that 'Beloved' was not: it's a heavy-handed, schematic piece of writing, thoroughly lacking in the novelistic magic Ms. Morrison has wielded so effortlessly in the past. It's a contrived, formulaic book that mechanically pits men against women, old against young, the past against the present....Unlike the heroine of 'Beloved,' who was strong, desperate, loving, vulnerable and angry all at once, almost all the women in this novel are victims....[T]his novel remains an earthbound hodgepodge, devoid of both urgency and narrative sleight of hand. It's neither grounded in closely observed vignettes of real life, nor lofted by the dreamlike images the author has used so dexterously in the past to suggest the strangeness of American history."          -- Michiko Kakutani

"...Morrison's rich, symphonic seventh novel...[is] not perfect--but a breathtaking, risk-taking work that will have readers feverishly, and fearfully, turning the pages."

"[A] long, complex, fluent novel which is not so much a description of that heavenly dwelling place as an interrogation of its meaning and its ultimate impossibility....Some readers may find the issues too many and too unfocused, but what secures them in the memory is the solid and careful scenes in which they are positioned."
-- Carol Shields

"[A]bundant, even prodigal..., symphonic, light-struck and sheer..., the splendid sister of 'Beloved'..."            -- John Leonard

"[C]omplex and impressive....With 'Paradise,' Morrison has brought it all together: the poetry, the emotion, the broad symbolic plan. Not that the novel is free of awkward elements. The male-female dichotomy, for example....But the novel richly rewards the reader's efforts. It is an ambitious, troubling and complicated piece of work, proof that Toni Morrison continues to change and mature in surprising new directions."
-- Brooke Allen

"Its title notwithstanding, this is not an enticing book. It does not invite you in or make you feel comfortable after you've crossed the threshold....'Paradise' is an examination of the persistence of intolerance, even among those who have been its victims. It is also an extended meditation on the paradox of good intentions leading to bad deeds. But although it presents a clear message about the dangers of rigid attitudes, 'Paradise' is more than a simple morality play. No position is viewed without some degree of understanding, no posture is presented without some measure of skepticism. As the characters and their stories unfold, complexities emerge and ironies deepen, rewarding the reader who has persevered."
-- Merle Rubin

"The whole novel is about the male scapegoating of sexually unattached women--a phenomenon significant enough, in Morrison's view, to be made to symbolize the entire period of social turbulence, from 1968 to 1976, in which her story is set....Morrison's fiction can sometimes seem a little willed. Certain images and episodes, certain icons and formulas are there, you feel, not because the story requires them but because Morrison thinks they ought to be there. This has to do, possibly, with her sense that she is not just writing novels; she is constructing a literary tradition."
-- Louis Menand

"Too often, Morrison is so besotted with making poetry, with the lyrical dyeing of every moment, that she cannot grant characters their own words. She is in love with HER words, and it is too bad if these words coincide somewhat awkwardly with the words of her characters....Morrison loves her own language more than she loves her characters....[S]he oppresses her characters with her own essence..."
-- James Wood