As this discussion and the reviews show, Paradise is first and foremost a novel about race, gender, and attitudes that are a product of race and gender. Killing the "white woman" is the first and, arguably, the most dangerous of the crimes the men undertake. Who is the "white girl"? Morrison has said in lectures that the answer to this is "obvious," but knowledgeable reviewers have suggested Seneca, Pallas, and Mavis as candidates. What are we to make of the paradox, that the construction of Ruby is about race and the whiteness of the woman is mentioned again and again, but precise identification is never verified? Each reader builds her or his set of clues. Is the point that so much violence and exclusion are based on race, but we cannot determine without a direct statement which character is white? Is it possible that race does...