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• The Bluest Eye (Oprah's Book Club)
Toni Morrison

Plume, 2000 - 224 pages

average customer review:based on 498 reviews
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   highly recommended  highly recommended






Somewhat disappointed and confused!

While Toni Morrison is more than worthy of her status as a Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature, her first novel here is somewhat of a disappointment to me. The story is about an eleven year old girl, Pecola, growing up in 1941 with World War II and the end of the great depression in Morrison's hometown of Lorain, Ohio. While I applaud MOrrison's attempt to create the atmosphere by using realistic devices such as a dialogue, slang, and cruel truths of life. Pecola leads a very bleak life with a father, Cholly. The book first states that she is carrying her own father's baby. I got confused while reading this book about Cholly's role as father. I'm not quite sure what happens to Pecola. The book is disjointed at times with different narrators and not a single voice. I felt lost at times and confused by the situation around Pecola's life. While I applaud anybody who writes a novel, this book was somewhat disappointing because I still felt that MOrrison was trying to find the right voice. Regardless, Morrison does write a powerful, grim, bleak novel but I still hold hope for Pecola's life.


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"My two and a half cents"

This novel impressed me as being a rich, poetically transcending, yet highly personal portraiture, of "small town" life, from across the tracks, in early forties America. Told from a childs perspective, the language varies from being on the cusp of lucidity, to biting, to playful, to raw. It was an exciting and soulful stew of a story, dark and esoterical enough to keep the reader involved along it's journey. The phrasing and poetic flourishes were delicious and mouth watering like a seven-up candy bar and worth the time and six-pence.









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Masterful First Novel, Terribly Sorrowful Tale [166]

Written in the 1960's, and published in 1970, this book delivers a perspective of the victim to a horrible rape. Way ahead of its time. If the topic, even 37 years later, is too chillingly graphic a topic, stay away.

As Morrison's first novel, it features some stylistic edges which are not as evident in her later works. First, the prose seems more majestic and incredibly tight. She reminds me more of Zora Neale Hurston in this book than in any other - but in each there is a Hurston-like style to her prose. Secondly, the story line is not as harsh about the white man - there is a rape of a man by white men and some bitter words - but the depths of the white man's evil upon the black man is not as resoundingly elicited here. Lastly, she delivers the narrative through the eyes of children - none even teenagers - which she never does in subsequent novels.

The eye color is merely symbolic of racial self-loathing. The sexually molested protagonist, Pecola, is the party asking for eye colors not established by others of her race. She amazingly sees her request for the eye color to come true, a sign of her mind's betrayal to her psyche while living through the impregnation of her young body - a product of a rape committed by her now incarcerated father. Her happiness resounds when delivered the new eye color, a symbol or signal of her mental break down.

Sexual deviation rings as a common thread. A self-proclaimed minister, Soaphead Church, enters the book in the last quarter to describe his thoughts to us in diary form. He is a sick person whose thoughts reflect what we see too often in our morning papers in regard to the Catholic Church's agents - but at least Soaphead loves little girls and does not touch them.

Twisting us through the town of Lorain, Ohio, Morrison reveals the skeletons of many closets. Most are apparently good people. All are full of love. We concentrate mostly on poor Pecola and her demon father Cholly - each who are loving, but not necessarily receiving or giving in a good manner. As Morrison states, "Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe." This sentence could be included in all of Morrison's other novels.

No comedy in these pages, just great prose and tremendous story telling. Among all of the American novelists of the last 50 years, I believe none can tell a story more articulately, nor more prophetically. As bitter as this tale may be, it was a delight to read.


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believe the hype . . . toni morrison is a master storyteller

Toni Morrison's jaw-dropping first novel, The
Bluest Eye is about Pecola, a little black girl
that loves little white dolls with blue eyes.

The book is a character study of the effect of
Eurocentric standards of beauty on black children,
especially little girls, which is still prevalent
in modern American today. It is NOT an easy read
and as with all of Toni Morrison's books, it is
not going to make the reader feel comfortable,
whomever you are.

Instead, the book is going to teach and not preach.
It doesn't preach because Toni Morrison never points
fingers, she creates characters instead. This book
helped to put the author on the map and deservedly
so. It is a rich story full of compelling details,
descriptive language and complex storylines that
appear to be a juxtaposition of human psyche and
animal instincts. This book will surprise you and
think about why all of this could really happen.


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Exceeded my Expectations

This is the first Toni Morrison experience for me and I was floored by this book. It tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, her tumultuous family-life and her dreams of being blue-eyed and blond-haired so that she would be loved. Her story is one that is at times difficult to get through (I had to put the book down a few times to catch my breath). Her thinking that blond hair and blue eyes will make her loveable is just heartbreaking at times, but it shows just how unjust life was during this time.


reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12



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