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shahrazedez 's review for:
The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
3.25 stars
Beautiful beautiful writing, reading this felt like running across a river, once I started I couldn’t stop. Compared to Beloved which took me ages to get into, this was so easy to get into.
Gorgeous writing aside, I feel like I liked the concept of the book better than the execution. I wish we had more Pecola povs and that we followed her into adulthood instead of just learning she went crazy. I understand from the afterward that because Pecola wouldn’t have the vocabulary to understand the violence done to her or its context we get the pov of Claudia and how she and her sister Freida observed what happened to Pecola. And whilst I did love Claudia’s pov and it was my favorite to read I really wish we got more Pecola povs precisely because I wanted to see how she wouldn’t understand what had happened to her and how she’d process it in other ways, beyond childhood.
Also all the men in this book were bottom of the barrel trash and I understand in the afterward that the author didn’t want to dehumanize the characters that contributed to Pecola’s suffering and demise, and I think especially for the time it was written and published that was important to do. But reading this now as someone who grew up learning that such violent cruel acts are in fact very human and more human than monster, the Cholly povs, the Soaphead Church povs, they were all excruciating to read. Precisely because I was thinking this is so typical of human beings, especially men, to react in that way, to deal with being oppressed by racism out on women and girls of that same race.
And I probably should have looked up trigger warnings because the amount of pedophilia from the men in this book didn’t work for me, especially since I was hoping to see a time where Pecola grows up and I had to read about some pseudo psychic who makes her kill a dog and writes a letter to God about his pedophilia.
The structure and arrangement of the POVs I enjoyed and liked, but again I wish we had a look into her adulthood maybe where she’d go to work or live a life telling others she had blue eyes etc. But I guess from the beginning it was clear that the story would start and end with the awful SA her dad did to her.
Overall the writing was gorgeous, but the particulars of how the story went didn’t work for me but I’ll definitely be reading more from the author.
Beautiful beautiful writing, reading this felt like running across a river, once I started I couldn’t stop. Compared to Beloved which took me ages to get into, this was so easy to get into.
Gorgeous writing aside, I feel like I liked the concept of the book better than the execution. I wish we had more Pecola povs and that we followed her into adulthood instead of just learning she went crazy. I understand from the afterward that because Pecola wouldn’t have the vocabulary to understand the violence done to her or its context we get the pov of Claudia and how she and her sister Freida observed what happened to Pecola. And whilst I did love Claudia’s pov and it was my favorite to read I really wish we got more Pecola povs precisely because I wanted to see how she wouldn’t understand what had happened to her and how she’d process it in other ways, beyond childhood.
Also all the men in this book were bottom of the barrel trash and I understand in the afterward that the author didn’t want to dehumanize the characters that contributed to Pecola’s suffering and demise, and I think especially for the time it was written and published that was important to do. But reading this now as someone who grew up learning that such violent cruel acts are in fact very human and more human than monster, the Cholly povs, the Soaphead Church povs, they were all excruciating to read. Precisely because I was thinking this is so typical of human beings, especially men, to react in that way, to deal with being oppressed by racism out on women and girls of that same race.
And I probably should have looked up trigger warnings because the amount of pedophilia from the men in this book didn’t work for me, especially since I was hoping to see a time where Pecola grows up and I had to read about some pseudo psychic who makes her kill a dog and writes a letter to God about his pedophilia.
The structure and arrangement of the POVs I enjoyed and liked, but again I wish we had a look into her adulthood maybe where she’d go to work or live a life telling others she had blue eyes etc. But I guess from the beginning it was clear that the story would start and end with the awful SA her dad did to her.
Overall the writing was gorgeous, but the particulars of how the story went didn’t work for me but I’ll definitely be reading more from the author.