Paradise: Toni Morrison

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Point of view can be disorienting, too. There are chapters titled with names of women, either the ones in the Convent or in Ruby (i.e. Consolata, Pat, Seneca, Divine aka Pallas, Gigi) but that doesn't mean that character will be the primary point of view for that chapter. Supporting the young people is Reverend Misner, a civil rights activist who is new to town, and his girlfriend Anna Flood. On the opposing side are the conservative Reverend Pulliam and the Morgan brothers. Many of the older women of Ruby are unsure which side to support, including Dovey and Soane Morgan, the wives of Steward and Deek. Pat Best, a schoolteacher and the mother of Billie Delia, has been shunned her entire life because her mother was a light-skinned outsider, yet she still rejects the young people’s call for change and defends Ruby’s traditions to Reverend Misner. Physical and emotional horrors … Oprah Winfrey in the 1998 film adaptation of Beloved. Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy Soane is the wife of Deek Steward and the sister of Dovey. Her sons, Easter and Scout, die while serving in the Vietnam War, a tragedy she continues to mourn; she believed they would be safer overseas than in the United States, outside of Ruby. She becomes aware of the affair that Deek conducts with Connie, and goes out to the Convent with the intention of intimidating Connie by asking for an abortion. Soane does not intend to have one, but she later loses the baby, and believes that it is because of the malice in her heart. When Connie saves her son Scout, the two women become close friends. Connie prepares “tonics” for Soane, and Soane invites the Convent women to the wedding. Soane becomes estranged from her sister because of their differing interpretations of what happened during the assault on the Convent. Steward Morgan

More than one of Morrison’s books could be classed as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it. The conservative elements in Ruby ultimately find it impossible to keep the impact of the Sixties from affecting their town. What "Sixties" ideas turn out to be the most powerful, the most resonant, for the people of Ruby? Do these ideas destroy the town's social cohesion or give it new strength? Some citizens find the possibility of change exciting, but the town leaders have identities and fortunes riding on the status quo. For them, Ruby is in a state of moral and physical decay, which only a radical rededication to its founding discipline can cure.

The Three Theologies of Paradise

Set in the 1680s when slavery was still in its infancy, A Mercy, Morrison’s ninth novel, focuses on Florens, a young, literate slave who is sold to pay a debt. Florens is crushed by being separated from her mother, and in her new life she attempts time and again to fill the open and aching wound. Morrison also received a number of honors in addition to the Nobel Prize, including the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 11. Morrison received an honorary doctorate from Oxford.

How has the history of Ruby (and Haven before it) shaped the nature of the town in the 1970s? What did "freedom" mean to the original settlers? What varying views of freedom do the modern inhabitants of Ruby hold?

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Dovey Morgan: Steward's wife. Miscarried several times and cannot have children. Is having an affair with a stranger.