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This is the most complex book I have read from Toni Morrison. It is the story of a black community called Ruby in rural Oklahoma in the 70s and the reaction to a female commune of sorts called the Convent out on the edge of the town. At issue here is skin-tone, the 8-rock dark black founders and their suspicions towards those with lighter skin. The book starts with describing a massacre and then goes back to paint in the details of the lives of the women and the story of the town. The narration is highly variable and not always easy to follow. I realize how important this book is and recognize the wonderful writing, but dropped a star from the lack of fluidity in the reading of the text and the confusion that this entailed.

The book begins rather violently with one of Toni's most powerful opening sentences:
They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. (p. 3)
Morrison discusses her choice of this phrase in the afterward and it definitely leaves an impression on the reader. It sets the expectation of a frenetic pace, although the book does slow down until the last chapter Save-Marie. Each chapter is named after one of the women starting with Ruby, who dies before the story starts and gave her name to the town.

The next chapter Mavis also starts out strong:
The neighbors seemed please when the babies smothered. Probably because the mint green Cadillac in which they died had annoyed them for some time. (p. 21) Mavis' story tragic - spousal abuse and poverty - but she runs away to the Convent to join the handful of women living there where she first meets Connie:
"You all ain't scared out here by yourselves? Don't seem like there's nothing for miles outside."
Connie laughed. "Scary things not always outside. Most scary things is inside." (p. 39)

The next character we meet is Grace, or Gigi:
Either the pavement was burning or she had sapphires hidden in her shoes. (p. 53) On her way to Ruby, her erstwhile train companion wants some ice and the racist salesman wants to charge him a nickel:
"Listen, you. Give him the ice you weren't going to charge me for, okay?"
"Miss, do I have to call the conductor?"
"If you don't, I will. This is train robbery, all right - trains robbing people."
"It's all right," said the man. "Just a nickel."
"It's the principle," said Gigi.
"A five-cent principle ain't no principle at all. The man needs a nickel. Needs it real bad."
(p. 66) Small but meaningful exchanges such as this abound in Morrison's writing always with a little moral in them - here, the price of a principle.

In the next chapter, Seneca, we learn a bit more about Ruby and the residents of the town, the Oven, the scandal around the motto engraved on the Oven (a central piece of their community symbolizing their flight from Reconstruction to Oklahoma and freedom) - "Furrow of His Brow" - and how it came to be interpreted, re-interpreted in the community. What is striking is the many uses to which Morrison puts language. This passage beautifully uses color as a mixed metaphor:
Even now the verbena scent was clear; even now the summer dresses, the creamy, sunlit skin excited him. If he and Steward had thrown themselves off the railing they would have burst into tears. So, among the vivid details of the journey - the sorrow, the stubbornness, the cunning, the wealth - Deek's image of the nineteen summertime ladies was unlike the photographer's. His remembrance was pastel colored and eternal. (p. 110) Seneca is abandoned by her sister and in turns abandons her deadbeat boyfriend in a prison and winds up at the Convent.

The next chapter, Divine, gives us more back story on Ruby and introduces Pallas who the girls at the Convent decide to name Divine after her mother DiDi. Her story is the most tragic of all, although the story of Billie Delia comes close (I found her story with the horse to be very moving). The chapter, however, starts with a sermon from Father Misner of one of the three competing churches in Ruby:
"Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good.
"Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like that. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural than you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God." (p. 141)
This sets the tone for how the religious community will respond to the Convent later in the story although Misner will be horrified by it.

The next chapter goes to one of the more central personalities in Ruby, Patricia, who is obsessed with family trees and old stories. I think it was my favorite chapter, perhaps because the narrative shifts were far less violent, but also because the language is perfectly beautiful: as she tries to glean more information about the families, the people of Ruby clam up:
Things got out of hand when she asked to see letters and marriage certificates. The women narrowed their eyes before smiling and offering to refresh her coffee. Invisible doors closed, and the conversation turned to weather. (p. 187) It is also in this chapter that we learn her theory about black on black racism. The original founders of Ruby were a deep black color that she uses the mining term 8-rock (the deepest, darkest level of the mine) for. Trying to keep the purity of their black blood, the founders tended to look down at lighter skin tones. Later, this has catastrophic consequences for the Convent (Remember that first line?) Later, in a conversation with Reverend Misner,
You're wrong, and that's your field you're plowing wet. Slavery is our past. Nothing can change that, certainly not Africa."
"We live in the world, Pat. The whole world. Separating us, isolating us - that's always been their weapon. Isolation kills generations. It has no future."
"You think they don't love their children?"
Misner stroked his upper lip and heaved a long sigh. "I think they love them to death." (p. 210)

The Convent is run by Consolata, the subject of the next chapter. In the good clean darkness of the cellar, Consolata woke to the wrenching disappointment of not having died the night before. (p. 221). She is the last of the nuns that once populated the Convent. Her wine cave is well-stocked and she serves as a guru and muse to the women that come live at the Convent. She falls in love with one of the community founders (who is married of course) in their respective youth: Speeding toward the unforseeable, sitting next to him, who was darker than the darkness they split, Consolata let the feathers unfold and come unstuck from the walls of a stone-cold womb. Out here where wind was not a help or a threat to sunflowers, nor the moon a language of time, of weather, of sowing or harvesting, but a feature of the original world designed for the two of them." (p. 229). Unfortunately for Consolata, her lover dumps her and returns to his family.

The next to last chapter is about one of the other Ruby residents that has had limited contact with the Convent, Lone. Toni saves the last chapter, Save-Marie, for the massacre scene announced in the opening line and its dreadful consequences. The book ends with several of the women survivors and returns to a metaphor of Piedade which was introduced earlier in the book. I found the closing paragraph quite beautiful: When the ocean heaves sending rhythns of water ashore, Piedade looks to see what has come. Another ship, perhaps, but different, heading to port, crew and passengers, lost and saved, atremble, for they have been disconsolate for some time. Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise. (p. 318)

As I said earlier, this is definitely not one of Morrison's easier works, but it is still rewarding and merits several reads to get all the layers that she was laid down here.

Fino's Toni Morrison Reviews:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song Of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise