The Bluest Eye is about race relations and, as such, can never be completely understandable to a non-American such as me. It revolves around a simple and very sad story of rape, incest and the victimisation of a little girl in 1940s America. It is told from the point of view of blacks - this was before the term African-American - and partly in another child's voice. The little girl thinks herself ugly and envies the looks of blue-eyed whites. That a black child could consider herself physically inferior was a real shock to me, and for considering this only, the book is worth reading. One wonders how much this has changed in the last four decades.

There is a broader subject, however, which is the psychological impact and destructive power of models of beauty, especially feminine beauty. This, unfortunately, is only alluded to and could have been addressed in far more depth. The book also lacks the victim's own voice. Because it is told in chronological disorder and from different protagonists' angles, the story tends to be less strongly felt. At times it almost reads like a documentary. Perhaps this is for the best, since some scenes might have been unbearable if told by the central character herself. Still, while interesting and often revealing, this book too often gave me the impression of being unfinished.

Toni Morrison's book is a reminder of some of this country's painful history and the realization that in many ways, not much has changed. It's educational, a thrilling read and provokes important thought. Recommended for any reader, particularly of classical literature.

How can you truly convey the horror of a situation without horrifying words. Reality is profanity and Morrison gets that- she never chooses a profane word in place of something else but, rather, uses that word because it is the only one that can be used. Wonderful book about finding your own beauty.

I read this book years ago and I thought it was a very good book. It has curse words, but it is done in taste. There is nothing wrong with a word and there is nothing wrong with talking about sex. These things happen everyday and to try to go through the world as if they don't exist is childlike and naive. They do exist and that is what the author is trying to express. It's reality.

Seriously, this is the only review of this book? She uses bad language and there is a lot of sexuality? Unfortunately, I haven't read this book (which is why I am looking at it on Amazon in the first place) but I thought people who looked at this page deserved a better review than that, so here is the Amazon.com review of the other cover version of the novel:

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 --