Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Dec 16, 2009

Kelly rated it:

When I finish a book, I like to hop on over to Amazon to see what others thought of it. I don't go to periodicals where only book snobs and literary gurus give their expert analysis; I like to see a spectrum of responses, from the librarian or professor to the housewife or high school student. There are always positive and negative reviews, always long and short reviews, always thoughtful and lazy reviews.

And even if I go to a book I love and see other people giving it 1 out of 5 sta More...

6 comments like (76 people liked it)

Jan 18, 2009

brian rated it:

well, i'm experiencing severe bookface fatigue and wasn't gonna report on this until i read this cool-as-shit bookster's review:

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/36813...

she checked out the reviews on amazon for the bluest eye and listed some excerpts:

"Toni Morrison is the most overrated author in America, it's only because of Oprah (the most overrated "personality" in America") that she is popular."

"You know, I More...

53 comments like (32 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2008

Summer rated it:

Toni Morrison doesn't get the respect she deserves and has rightfully earned. I think that part of this has to do with the unfortunate connotations people have regarding Oprah's Book Club and part of it stems from, if not outright racism and misogyny, than the racist and misogynist assumptions that Morrison is popular only because she is a nonwhite woman, liberal guilt etc. The latter is false: Toni Morrison has won the Pulitzer and the Nobel because she is an excellent author.

N.B. - More...

8 comments like (33 people liked it)

Jun 25, 2008

Thu rated it:

When we finished this book, about half the class--- including me--- were infuriated at Morrison for humanizing certain characters that caused Pecola to suffer the most. "Is she saying what they did was okay?! Is she telling us they weren't to blame and we should feel sorry for them?!" I remember writing my "objective" and "tone-neutral" in-class essay while trying to stifle my own feelings of resentment.

I know now that the answers to those two questions More...

1 comment like (11 people liked it)

Sep 28, 2007

Sara rated it:

The Bluest Eye is awesome, it is so deep in terms of the themes and the authorial message. The story is about the division betwen blacks and white. Peacola, the main character of the story talks how her life should have been a lot easier if she had a "blue eye" or in other words, if she was only white. Throughtout the story, Peacola had been going to tough and hard times, through her family. Her mother is just there, doing a bad job, whereas her dad is constanly getting drunk, and caus More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

May 29, 2009

Sabra rated it:

I just read this today, and the rating system really doesn't apply to my feelings, which are still fresh, on this book : "I like it" "I really liked it", etc. I have NO idea how to rate this book.

I didn't like the book. As the author herself states in the afterward, "...this is a terrible story about things one would rather not know anything about." But at the same time, the story is engrossing, I found the back stories interesting, and really fell in More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 10, 2010

Connie rated it:

Pecola. That's her name.

Her name bothered me the first time I read it. Pecola. How do you even pronounce it. It's...ugly. Slowly, but surely, I understood that was the point. Or at least a point among many wicked-but-important points in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Pecola herself would never be pretty, would never be understood. No one would ever be able to shorten or lengthen her name into a cute nick. Her hair, her eyes, her countenance, her life, would More...

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2010

Hazel rated it:

I was too young for this book around 1980. The searing pain Morrison communicated was baffling to me; her poetry impenetrable. Rereading it for the first time some thirty years later, I find it no less painful; so much ugliness and anger, degradation and self-hatred. It may be more difficult to read because there is now also, a recognition of its authenticity. I have known these people.

When Sammy and Pecola were still young Pauline had to go back to work. She was older now, with no

More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 12, 2008

Steven rated it:

Like all of the Toni Morrison novels I have read thus far, this book is maybe just a little too good or too brilliant for its own good.

This novel is set in 1940s Ohio and is the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, who prays every day to be beautiful. She is not at all what the other kids think of as beautiful in 1940s Ohio, mainly because she has dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, and to be different is to be mocked. She wants to fit in with every More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2008

Rashaan rated it:

Reading Morrison's first novel is like looking at America's history straight in the eye, ugly, awesome, and heart-wrenching, as real as Racism, as dark as skin, and as glorious as the plains, the mountains, and all the beauty that this land once promised. With language as pure as poetry, we learn through Faulknerian, polyphonic narrative, Morrison as predecessor to Erdrich and Fred D'Aguiar, that racism acts like a twisted and debased game of telephone. Seeds of desire, the stuff of dreams and n More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2008

Katie rated it:

This book is devastating but worth the painful encounter for Morrison's phenomenally crafted prose, which is immersive and beguiling at describing anything from a rip in a couch to a father raping his daughter. Not for the faint of heart.

As a feminist, I have been wondering lately about the value of depicting sexual violence in books. Specifically, I am thinking of Bastard Out of Carolina, The Women of Brewster Place and a lesser known 70s novel called Small Changes. Not only is it p More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2010

Sasha rated it:

This was a tough read, both for the content and the way the shifting narrative kept throwing me out of the story. The toughness is intentional and works at keeping the reader from relaxing into sympathy. To really achieve that, though, I think Pecola would have to be the first person narrator who begins and ends the book, rather than an outsider who feels sympathy.
The slices of life, the descriptions, and the quick building of characters were all impressive. One of the things it most trig More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 07, 2008

Amy rated it:

This was the most desperately painful book I've ever read. As such, I think everyone should be required to read it.

This is part of what fiction is supposed to be. It's supposed to help us understand ourselves better, by showing us things that we are, and things that we aren't, by showing us things that have happened to us and things that have happened to others. In reading good fiction we learn about human beings in the world, and by extension, we learn to identify better with oursel More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jul 08, 2008

Emily rated it:

This was my first introduction to Toni Morrison, read at the age of 20. More memorable than the novel itself in many ways, were my expectations of what a Toni Morrison novel is "like." I was definitely performing two strains of analysis while reading The Bluest Eye, meaning in addition to simply following the plot, I was checking the the plot against what I had previously envisioned as a Toni Morrison plot.
I have to say, everything you read about Toni Morrison, without having More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 23, 2007

Casey rated it:

At first I liked this book, but I didn't love it. I thought the changes in narration were cool. In an afterward, Morrison commented that she thought these changes caused the reader to be "touched, but not moved." There was something distancing, though. Pecola was--and her pain was--so on the margins. When I think about this, though, I think that distance makes the novel ultimately more effective. This poor girl is an afterthought....I could read her story and not be destroyed, as More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 21, 2008

Katie_marie rated it:

I very much felt like an outsider while reading this book. Right away she juxtaposes the "perfect" but simple and happy life of a middle class white family with that of a young Black girl in the 1940s. Likely most of her symbolism was lost to me however the afterward was very enlightening as to why she chose to write the book in seasons, to jump from character to character and to use the style that she did. To get the most out of it I would recommend reading it in a sitting or two. It More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 28, 2009

Emmy rated it:

This book was incredible. I couldn't put it down and when I did put it down, I had to sit there and not move for a good half hour.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 12, 2008

matt rated it:

I especially enjoyed the Faulknerian overtones where the main character converses with a shadow-self. Sparse, severe, drastic, dire....

I love the way she can turn a paragraph...The sentences hang together to create a whole. It's one thing to write a sentence or even a chapter, but a paragraph artist is a rare thing, indeed.

the image of the little white girl on the drinking cup (I think it's Shirley Temple, though that might be me making it up) as an archetype of a More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2009

Lindsay rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Feb 18, 2009

Tina rated it:

Aside from being on the 1001 list, this book also peaked my interest when I noticed it on the ALA's most challenged books list. After reading the book, I completely understand why it's been challenged. It has some very graphic and disturbing themes dealing with young girls. However, the idea the book explores is fascinating and would not be complete with out the disturbing elements. The story probes into the world of a young black girl who wishes she had blue eyes. She has come to believe that s More...

0 comments like

Jan 22, 2012

Lauren rated it:

So it starts off with a very childish paragraph about this family and this girl who wants to play. and it's repeated 3 times and the 2nd time they take out the punctuation and the 3rd time they take out the spaces. It's supposed to have some type of meaning to it. The next chapter it talks about this girl Pecola who is pregnant with her father's baby. It explains that if the seeds don't grow then there's going to be something wrong with the baby.
These 2 girls named Claudia and Frieda are g More...

0 comments like

Jan 02, 2012

Melissa rated it:

The Bluest Eye....well, what CAN I say about this disgusting book? When the author isn't continuously discussing child molestation, child rape, and sexual body parts, her use of metaphors and imagery is very well done. But these literary devices are unable to take away from how gross this book is. Yes, I know that Pecola has had a very unhappy and unfortunate life, but she lets herself get walked all over! Her brother runs away, why doesn't she ask to go with him? Because she's scared? Then More...

0 comments like

Nov 19, 2011

Mowey rated it:

in this poetic and painfully charged novel, Claudia Macteer, the narrator, punctuated the despair and tragedy of her fellow Macteers and Breedloves through her storytelling that resonated with such depth and wonder. she told the story of her friend Pecola Breedlove, the girl central to all the despair, pain, anonymity and yearning. the black, 11 year old girl who so badly wanted to have those blue eyes like all the Shirley Temples of the world because she wouldn’t want to see her ‘nigger’ skin a More...

0 comments like

Nov 06, 2011

Debbie rated it:

If you've ever wondered what internalized racism means just read this book. The structure can be a bit difficult to read, with gaps in the story and changing point of view from 1st person to omniscient, but once you've finished and reflected on the book you can see why Morrison wrote it that way.

The Bluest Eye is disturbing and sad, but Morrison has said that when she wrote the book (1970) she was afraid that this story would be lost. At the time, most of the books coming from Afric More...

0 comments like

Nov 04, 2011

Nichole rated it:

The Bluest Eye tells the hard life story of protaganist, Pecola, through the view of her friend Caludia. Pecola comes from a dysfunctional family with her mother, father, and brother. The setting is Ohio in the mid 1970's. Pecola's father is a alcoholic who is emotionally broken by his past and her mother works for a white family and this is the only time she is happy. As the story unfolds we learn of the troubles that Pecola's lives with daily. Her mother and father are constantly fighting, an More...

0 comments like

Oct 05, 2011

Cher rated it:

Although I struggled getting through this text, trying to follow the first person narrative, the trauma the main character Pecola goes through, and the heartbreaking affect Euro-American values has on this little 11 year old girl's self-image, the story is highly affective. From the very first page and a half Morrison implicitly and explicitly shows how damaging society's obsession with blue eyes and blond hair as a definition of beauty is for those who are not within the white European American More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 26, 2011

Karen rated it:

Well, this was the first ebook I "borrowed" from our library and read on my iPhone! That part was cool. The story was interesting, but the prose was, well, too poetic. In the preface to the book, the author even commented on her style of writing: "Besides, it didn't work: many readers remain touched but not moved." That's how I feel. It's a sad, pitiful story about a black girl who gets abused and feels that she is so ugly. She wants to have blue eyes - she thinks that More...

0 comments like

Jul 25, 2011

Amy rated it:

The book "The Bluest Eye" is about a young girl named Pecola Breedlove who wants to fit in in society. Because of her own skin color and face structure, she has been teased and assaulted every day in her life. Additionally, Pecola prays to god every day for the blue eyes she had always dreamed of of having. But as things couldn't get any worse, Pecola must face the cruel hardships of walking into society and the hard labor at home. With the help of her two friends Frieda and Claudia, t More...

0 comments like

Jul 12, 2011

Samantha rated it:

The Bluest Eye, a novel written by Toni Morrison is a heart wrenching and emotional story. It focuses on a black girl named Pecola. This novel depicts the cruelty of society and the separation between Blacks and Whites. This story line takes place in the mid 1900's in a town in Ohio, where Pecola lives. Early on in her life, she was always called ugly and bullied by many kids at her school. Even the teachers would pick on her and she wouldn't have a person to sit with. She dreamed to be white a More...

1 comment like

Jun 06, 2011

Erin added it

The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison

The plot of The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison can be disturbing at many times. There was rape and molestation, along with abuse. The plot tells of an ugly girl is raped by her father and gets pregnant. People already do not like the girl because they believe she is very ugly and does not belong any where. The book also tells of the ugly girl’s parents lives and why they truly are messed up. The mother is very abusive and the father is a drunk and a ra More...

1 comment like