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The Bluest Eye

by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780307278449
ISBN10: 0307278441
Condition: Standard


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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

New York Times Bestseller

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.

"You can't go wrong by reading or re-reading the collected works of Toni Morrison. Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else — they're transcendent, all of them. You’ll be glad you read them." Barack Obama

Review

“This story commands attention, for it contains one black girl’s universe.” Newsweek

Review

“So precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry.” The New York Times

Review

“A profoundly successful work of fiction....Taut and understated, harsh in its detachment, sympathetic in its truth...it is an experience.” The Detroit Free Press

About the Author

Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.

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Average customer rating 5 (2 comments)

`
NicholasK , February 22, 2015 (view all comments by NicholasK)
This is perhaps one of my all-time favorite books ever. Toni Morrison writes so magically, so eloquently, that each and every page feels like a small piece to a very large poem. Morrison's characters are so well developed, that you feel their pain, and you hope that they pull through their darkest periods and overcome all the adversity that they face. Pecola, one of the main characters, and the character in which the main plot revolves around, is a testament to humanity's potential to hate, to ostracize, to malign. I fell in love with her character, and felt very protective of her as she suffered time and time again (this is why I elected to name my newly adopted cat Pecola.) Morrison delves into the world of American history that was and is still so full of racism. She is able to transcend simply writing a novel about the African-American experience, or the experience of a young girl, or the experience of suffering, and creates a world that each and every reader can relate to.

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`
Kelly ORourke , May 15, 2011
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is a novel of vivid and grotesque descriptions surrounding black youth in the south in the 1940’s, being retold through the eyes of the adult character Claudia MacTeer as she remembers it. I found the novel to portray the racism and hatred between social status and society in a very realistic manner for this time period. Because of such broad concepts as racism, hatred, discrimination, wealth/poverty, love, etc, I would suggest this book to a wide range of readers. You can’t put an age or gender on the audience, except realistically, women will probably appreciate it more because the novel is seen through the eyes of a young girl, giving it a naturally youthful and feminine feel as you read. This is powerful however, because as the reader, one is able to stand in a child’s shoes rather than an adult’s. Seen mostly through the eyes of Claudia MacTeer, she starts by establishing what has happened to 12 year old Pecola Breedlove: incest rape by her father that results in a pregnancy and eventual death of the baby. The novel is a journey from autumn up until the summer it occurs. The novel begins “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow” and then states “There is really nothing more to say--except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how” (5-6). This helps to prove to readers that everything in life has its reasons for happening, but as humans it isn’t necessarily possible to know why they happen. All we can really do is analyze how it happened, and provide our own solutions to give ourselves a sense of closure. The Bluest Eye is successful in achieving its goal of showcasing important information for the reader. The ideas suggested are that people are always striving to find perfection or at least find a source of distraction from their imperfections (as Pecola uses blue eyes to defer from her rape/pregnancy). This reminded me of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, with the parallel concept of racism and black-white relations. However, I personally do not find one to do a greater job than the other of getting the point across, as Lee’s gives a central conflict that is more detrimental towards adults, opposed to Morrison’s, which is focused mainly on the well-being of children. Overall, The Bluest Eye provides a solid example of the more gruesome side of society in the 1940’s. It covers not only the destruction of youth’s innocence, but also the infidelity of the adults at that time, and the major rift between social classes during the struggle through the Great Depression. If you would like a novel that is historical like non-fiction, yet intriguing like fiction, The Bluest Eye will serve to provide you with jaw-dropping moments and yet be emotionally gripping enough to result in tears.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780307278449
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
05/08/2007
Publisher:
GOLDEN BOOKS
Series info:
Vintage International
Pages:
206
Height:
.60IN
Width:
5.10IN
Thickness:
.75
LCCN:
False
Series:
Vintage International
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
2007
UPC Code:
2800307278441
Author:
Toni Morrison
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
African Americans
Subject:
Girls
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Ohio
Subject:
Bildungsromans

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List Price:$16.00
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