“They shot the white girl first.”
This
line opens the novel Paradise,
published in 1998 by author Toni Morrison, who was born in Lorain, Ohio on 18 February 1931.
This novel is based in a patriarchal community named Ruby. The founders of
which are descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile and
racist world. The community has an underlying foundation of righteousness,
fear, and rigidly enforced law. The conflict has to do with the additional
group of exiles that gathered a promised land of their own, only seventeen
miles away from Ruby. What does not help the situation is that nine male
citizens of Ruby feel the urge to take out their feelings of pain, terror, and
murderous rage on some unlucky victims.
I am intrigued by the title and
opening sentence to the novel Paradise,
and for those main reasons I would want to read it. I do not regularly go
outside of my typical genres of books including fictitious horror and mystery,
but I would definitely give this book a chance.
I have read some of Toni Morrison's poetry and a couple of her books, but not this one. I think you'd find some of those truths about human nature you mentioned you usually look for in another post.
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