- Unknown Binding
- ASIN: B00005WKEN
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
Paradise
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I could hardly stop reading this book. Toni Morrison really is an amazing writer - it almost felt as if someone was singing this book to me as I read it. I was interested to read the comments in the other reviews about the ending. I am a bit of a 'hard to please' reader. I like to know what happens to my characters, but I really don't like it when authors string together improbable plot twists to make it all 'make sense', or scrunch years into the final chapter to give a sense of what happened next. I think Morrison, however, gets the mixture just right in the ending of Paradise. It closes on a mystery, but gives you distinct clues about what happens to the crucial characters. How you interpret the clues is entirely up to you and the beliefs you hold. Fantastic - she includes us in the process of creation at a crucial moment. We make this book ourselves, as the men and women of Ruby made their worlds.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In 'Paradise' Morrison's writing is even more beautiful and provoking than in her previous novels. Probably not the best for a first time reader, but absolutely incredible.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I haven't read Morrison before, and I'm slightly wary that I've started here, with what is almost surely (such is the exemplary quality of the prose, the themes, the style, the control, the compassion, the tension, the intellect) one of her best books. If there are better among her works, then she more than deserves that Nobel prize.
Paradise is, of course, a story of race. From it's explosive opening line ("They shoot the white girl first.") this is clear, even if one were not more generally aware of Morrison and her work. What unfolds is a story of two communities: the racically black town of Ruby, about to be riven by a conflict between it's youngers and elders, and a neighbouring community of women living in "the convent", named for the building's previous use. Through eight chapters, each bearing a woman's name, the story of the town and the convent, and how the separate women each come to live in it, and the tensions between the two, emerge, flinging the reader firmly to the immense detonation in the novel's final pages.
Paradise is certainly one of the most powerful novels I've read. Primarily it is about tensions, conflicts: between gender, race, age, communities, time, even nature and humankind. It is compassionate, sometimes sharpy brutal, infused with history and poetry, and one of the most completely moving books I've come across. All reactions to books should be to some extent visceral rather than mental, purely instinctive rather than rational, and this appealed to me in those terms: like all my favourite novels, I can't explain why it draws me other to say: it struck me as a force, entire of itself.
Paradise is, of course, a story of race. From it's explosive opening line ("They shoot the white girl first.") this is clear, even if one were not more generally aware of Morrison and her work. What unfolds is a story of two communities: the racically black town of Ruby, about to be riven by a conflict between it's youngers and elders, and a neighbouring community of women living in "the convent", named for the building's previous use. Through eight chapters, each bearing a woman's name, the story of the town and the convent, and how the separate women each come to live in it, and the tensions between the two, emerge, flinging the reader firmly to the immense detonation in the novel's final pages.
Paradise is certainly one of the most powerful novels I've read. Primarily it is about tensions, conflicts: between gender, race, age, communities, time, even nature and humankind. It is compassionate, sometimes sharpy brutal, infused with history and poetry, and one of the most completely moving books I've come across. All reactions to books should be to some extent visceral rather than mental, purely instinctive rather than rational, and this appealed to me in those terms: like all my favourite novels, I can't explain why it draws me other to say: it struck me as a force, entire of itself.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Paradise Lost
This is without the doubt one of the greatest most lyrical works of literature I have ever read, its beauty and descriptions bring the story to life of a community that goes beyond... Read more
Published on 3 Mar 2005 by Jh Shiel
tremendous but confusing
I am a huge fan of Toni Morrison and this book did not disappoint. I thought it was interesting how she explored closed minds and prejudice among an all black community and then... Read more
Published on 29 Mar 2001 by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
A confused but pleased fan
I am a very big fan of Morrison's work, this being the third novel of hers I have read, the others being 'Beloved' and 'Song of Solomon'. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 1999
Wow
Having started with Song of Solomon I kinda knew what to expect but nothing prepared me for Paradise. This is my favourite book of hers: I cried when it ended. Read more
Published on 3 Oct 1999
BRILLIANT(??????)
i am a student who had to read this book and do a presentation on it.....it is the worst book i have ever read in my entire life. Read more
Published on 24 Sep 1999
TYPICAL TONI...MYSTERIOUS
Jazz and Song of Solomon, confused me a lot of the time throughout the book, but in the end, the story came together and left a very profound message with the reader. Read more
Published on 2 May 1999
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