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Women's Fiction

The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye

List Price: $14.00
Your Price: $10.50
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Observation Blue Eyes
Review: Oprah's Book Club would not have been born without this author. This is what Oprah has been telling her TV audience. Therefore, I read the title BLUEST EYE. I have to admit Toni Morrison has a lively vocabulary and a very neat way of paying attention to details from a "person of color"'s viewpoint. We have the theme of incest again in this book, snaking like a red thread thru "Oprah-Books". I want to give Miss Toni credit for her gift of observation in her people's lives. Some must have really wished for blue eyes. Her narration is well-rounded like chiselled from one block, written 1962-1965, and I got the picture she depicts. When I arrived in 1967 in the USA, being once a little girl in "Nazi-Germany", there was the "hot summer" in Detroit with the Black Panther riots. I also noticed then, that there were no black dolls on the toy market, while my playmates in Germany had, among others, Negro-dolls during the Nazi-era. Were the Nazis more tolerant than the racists in the USA? That question occured to me. And I can understand that colored girls longed for blue eyes as seen in the dolls. Toni Morrison writes an Afterword in 1993, but I think her novel stands alone by itself, and the Afterword is not necessary, as a matter of fact, has a tendency to harm her novel, because the Afterword comes from a different time. Times have changed .........

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Bluest Eye
Review: I am somewhat familiar with the writing style of Toni Morrison. After reading Beloved, I saw the similarities in the novel also by Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. This novel was a very strong and influential one. Morrison portrayed the harsh racial differences that occurred in 1941 by describing the life of two young poor black girls, Claudia and Pecola.
I can relate to this story. Pecola focuses on her imperfections throughout the whole book at the age of eleven. She believes that her ugliness is the reason why her parents don't love her. She wishes for blue eyes because she thinks things would be different if she had them. In this society, many people try changing themselves to be someone there not. It's a huge problem today, and we all have to learn how to accept who we really are. I recommend this book because it shows how while life these days is so different than back then, in some ways it's exactly the same.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: reply to the april 15th 2002 reviewer
Review: I'd just like to advise the person who thought that T.M. can't write to please take a good look at his review, and tell the world how one can be so stupid as to enter such a piece (for everyone to read!!), criticizing and insulting a writer,but not noticing that he is ridiculing himself by misspelling every second word!! Maybe that explains why Tony M.'s great writing can not be appreciated by this person.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: She won for this book?
Review: A novella or a collection of vignettes? No plot, just a theme, incestuous sexual abuse among unfortunate African-Americans in the mid 20th century, and childhood anecdotal reminisces, didn't satisfy me. Though filled with wonderfully creative metaphors and similes that were worth applauding, poetic writing simply does not suffice for story. Maybe one day Pecola, Claudia, or Pauline might be fleshed out and made the heroine of a novel with beginning, middle, and climax, which will intrigue with its complexities, but 'Blue' was more like reading a writer's notebook containing sketches of potential characters for future novels. I've read other books by T. Morrison that were hung on a plot... like The Song of Solomon and Paradise, which I would recommend to readers who want more.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: pretentious pornography
Review: Yeah, I really wasnted to read a pretentious, unrealistic book that culminated in a drunk guy raping his little daughter and the girl getting pregnant and going insane. Toni Morrison has no mastery over ther stream-of-consciousness technique, therfore, everything she writes sound fake and contrived. I'm not saying all books should be clean, or that they should all have clear plots and a classic narrative structure, I'm only asking that ifa writer deviates fromthe norn, they od it for a reason other than making themsleves look smart. Morrison has, to usea cliched but accurate phraser, the subtlety of a sledgehammer, whcih makes a less-than-bright reader feel smart and sophisticated when the can figure out the symbolism of an insane balck girl walking around flapping her arms. Hmmm, does she wish she could fly? Gee, I wonder.
This is a stupid, rpetentious book, which may be why it has done so well on the bookclubs.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not my kind of book, but maybe yours....
Review: I thought cause it was Oprah's favourite and because it was one of the book club, it would be a good book. It is, but if you're native language isn't english like me, than you will have a hard time with the slang words etc. Next to it, you have to want to read about the past, racism etc.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a classic from the latter half of the 20th century
Review: I have read The Bluest Eye a couple of times, and I unfortunately can relate to being a young girl thinking the world would be kinder and love me too if only I had blue eyes. Luckily I managed to change that attitude as I grew into adulthood -- however, the world that is shaped around the young girl in this poignant book will never allow for her to do the same.

This is a story that brings forth the frightening circumstances for a young African-American girl who is forever deemed ugly and hated, even within the role of her own family (her mother works for a white family where she cares for the little blonde girl.)

This book also addresses what it is to be an African-American FEMALE, which is a unique incomparable perspective that echoes Shirley Chisolm's famous writings "I'd Rather be Black Than Female." The book draws the picture that society's treatment of an African-American female is this particular heroine's downfall, and the reader is left with the discomforting knowledge that this isn't necessarily fiction.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: evil white people
Review: ...i just couldnt get into the book... its just so boring. But something else was naggin me, I was thinkin, is this for real, no way, i know not all white people were rasist even back then. But this book makes them all look like toenails of satan, and they are shown as the source of all the Black people's problems.every thing, even dolls and flowers remind them of there repression. Is this even an accurate description of the past, or just over exagerating. I think its the latter boys and girls, but in this world of Toni Morrison, every...white dude is a rasist. but clealy theres evidence of non-racist white people even in the times of slavery. Dont forget that some white people came to america from non-english speaking countries after slavery(polish, german, dutch, russian, french, etc.) sure there were rascist white people then, but not every dang caucasion was a freakin skin head. i dont understand this book, its like its saying, "hey this is the theme, every white dude is a descendent of a racist slave owners, actually, they were all racist even to the 20th century, every last one of them. they still are" Books like these give me a bad image, its trash, and it sturrs up old hatred.
Ok, there was some good to this novel, it is after all, 2 stars instead of 1. Some where in that over-descriptive language of Morrison i felt sympathy for the main character pecola, she is after all, living in a world where every white person is part of the Klan...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Another great book from Toni Morrison
Review: I flew through this book in less than two days, and am certain that I won't forget it...it's as beautifully written as any of Morrison's other books, and somehow more disturbing and haunting than the others of her that I've read. It's better than the too-long SONG OF SOLOMON, but still not as good as JAZZ--her best novel, if you ask me. THE BLUEST EYE is amazing, though, and at times deeply depressing. I found the incidents with the cat and the dog to be particularly horrifying, and the rape scene is written so horrifyingly well that I practically felt guilty--as though I were the rapist. It's an incredibly powerful story with a very sad ending...and the mysterious, lengthy conversation that Pecola has with her "friend" near the end still has me wondering who she was talking to. Has she already gone crazy? (She mentions that no one else can see this "friend.")

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: don't believe the hype
Review: I tried giving this book a chance but was sorely disappointed. It just made me feel guilty just cos I'd been born white. You know, I know blacks have had a hard time in this world...I'm not naive...but there's a right and wrong way to tell us about your problems. This book is an example of the wrong way. To me it came off as preachy and heavy-handed. And I don't care how many awards a book wins...that doesn't mean I should automatically like it.


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