Product Description

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.

It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove -- a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others -- who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3749 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.com Review
Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 2000: Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.

Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.

There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.

This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. --James Marcus

From Library Journal
Recorded Books expands the Morrison audiobook collection by revisiting the Nobel prize winner's early works. Her debut novel, The Bluest Eye, explores the impact of racism and poverty on adolescent Pecola Breedlove. Surrounded by images of white iconsDShirley Temple, Mary Jane, and the classic family from Dick & Jane readersDPecola is tormented by both her family and peers. Alcoholism, rape, and humiliation drive her into the relative safety of madness where she finally finds the only bit of self-worth, believing her eyes are truly the bluest. In 1981's Tar Baby, Morrison deals with a different set of cruelties. The six major characters are her most diverse, and the conflicts are both realistic and symbolic, embodying the opposition of wealth and poverty, youth and age, male and female, black and white, in a microcosm of society found on a Caribbean island. Lynne Thigpen again expertly captures the richness of the author's characters, descriptions, and language. These two new releases are important to any collection of current American social fiction.DJoyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
In this subtle and disturbing early work, Toni Morrison tells an ugly story, creating real beauty in the process. Her approach to the plight of a black girl in Ohio who longs for blue eyes so she'll be lovable is to use many voices and points of view. Lynne Thigpen manages marvelously to create different colors for each of these; she not only reads beautifully, she sings beautifully. The author's note at the end of this recording is extremely interesting, adding the mature author's insight to the story, written thirty years ago. B.G. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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Customer Reviews

Excellently written, however, irrelevant.
The Bluesy Eye by Mrs. Morrison is written about a girl in the early 1940's. Pecola Breedlove, our protagonist, is distraught at the fact that she's a black skinned girl living in a white girl world. Mrs. Morrison does an outstanding job in her descriptions of everything with beauty in her novels. For example, whenever something that appears attractive in the novel is mentioned, it usually has the word white attached to it. By following the book closely you can tell that with everything beautiful white is the word, with everything distasteful, is described black.

Unfortunately Mrs. Morrison can take awhile before she can convey any points. One reason for this is because she changes narrators often, which makes following her points difficult. Mrs. Morrison also does not separate herself from any other novels that address struggling minorities. The character creates a fantasy world to leave her problems instead of using reasoning and creativity to address her challenges. Mrs. Morrison has created another in a long line of protagonists that point the finger instead of being self reliant. When posing questions about novels, authors should address ways to solve them among the way. Even if the topic happened fifty years before I was born. It's a book that was well written, but wasn't going anywhere from the start.

The Worst Book I've Read in a Long Time
I decided not to finish this book after reading about two thirds of it, and realizing that every page was filled with filthy descriptions and the story was jumping around way too much. It nauseated me to read and I saw no necessity to go into such graphic detail about many things. I kept wondering when I would start to like it as much as the other people did who raved about it, but never got there and was so relieved when I decided to put it down and give it back to Goodwill and find a better book to spend my time with. I am still amazed that this author won a Nobel or Pulitzer prize for her literature, as I found this book totally disgusting and full of filth.

There is so much better literature to spend your time with. Find something more fulfilling and uplifting. It's fine to read a bood about suffering, but Toni Morrison really should take some writing courses before she attempts to write another. It was extremely hard to follow the story in addition to being overy graphic for no good reason that I could see.

A Story Everyone Needs To Read!
This is my first Toni Morrison novel. At times difficult, at times you have to put the text down and think about what you have just read. A beautifully written story that really hits home and really makes you think. As a white man, reading this book at this time (a time when we are close to electing a black man as president), it made me realize how far we have come as a country; and yet it made me think about how far we have yet to go. This is an important "don't miss" novel. If at all possible try to read it in one or two sittings. Ms. Morrison has done a masterful job!