Toni Morrison's Paradise (MAXnotes)

"'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."David M. Gracer is the author of 'Toni Morrison's Paradise (MAXnotes)' with ISBN 9780878911981 and ISBN 0878911987.