The Bluest Eye

By: Toni Morrison, Jacqueline Woodson - introduction

Narrated by: Toni Morrison, Karen Murray

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace. • With a new introduction by Jacqueline Woodson.

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

In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—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.

Critic reviews

A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME

A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK!

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

“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

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

This book is brutal

I decided to listen to this book after it was recommended to me and my girlfriend by her friend. We were to read it together and discuss it. I generally appreciate books like this and the writing and narration was exemplary. But I will say this was an incredibly brutal and depressing book to get through. My girlfriend couldn't finish it. I made it through the book but I cannot say that I enjoyed it.

The book tells the life story of Pecola it's main character. As the book proceeds, her life goes from bad to worse, and even worse still. The book presents no potential solutions to the systems perpetuating the characters grief in life, no anything but a brutal look at how dismally horrible a life can be. It was anxiety provoking and depressing in every aspect. The book is insightful in that it allows you to experience how bad a life can be and grow your understanding and empathy, but if you are a person who reads to gain knowledge or enlightenment beyond raw experience this book might not be for you.

Disturbing

I wish I would have read this any other year but 2020. In a year I am readfing to escape pain, depression and just trying to breathe through the smoke, this book took me deeper and sadder and more disturbed. I am sorry anyone has to deal with the many problems the main characters in this book had to go through. Though this was a historical fiction, much of the bigotry, and abuse goes on still.

Toni Morrison did the narration of her own book and kept the story alive. Her writing is known for the poetic prose. I did appreciate that, but I found it made the story even more disturbing. I do plan to read more of her books. But not right now.

wow what a first novel!

I have read many of her books but this is the most poetic, it sings In it's soft melodic verses one rough meters. it should be no surprise that she is a Nobel Laureate. She sits astride post modern literature doing for African Americans what Faulkner did for southerners and Steinbeck for the survivors of the dust bowl, Seidel for holocaust survivors. She afirms what Faulkner said about humanity prevailing.

brilliant!

she was more than a writer, story teller or author... she was in one word .. brillant!

Very tough read

I am unsure if the beginning of the book is a punch in the stomach that is eased up throughout the novel or a punch that makes the book even harder to go through. Knowing what is going to happen doesn't prepare you for any of it.