Well, it is a book filled with conceits. There are powerful ideas here, and a lone paragraph or two of powerful prose, but mostly it is a book amused with how hard it is trying to impress you.

And here is my truth: I’d rather a writer get lost in the story than try to elicit a certain measured response from me, the reader. Writer, say what you have to say and I, the reader, will take from it what I will. You (Ms. Morrison) trying to control the process, predetermine my response (which is basically what she says in the [wordy, bloated, pompous] afterward)—well, just write a better story.

I know I read this
book years ago but I didn’t remember much of it. I
don’t think I had the emotional maturity to read it then. Even now there are parts of the book
that I know I pulled away from emotionally. It is a
devastating book. She managed to write a scene of
rape and incest in such a way that I felt
overwhelming compassion for the father and the
daughter.
The edition of the book that I’m reading has an
afterward by Ms Morrison in which she talks about
why she wrote it in the way she wrote it. She didn’t
think the book was entirely successful. She says
that, “Holding the despising glance while sabotaging
it was difficult.” And that, for me, is the experience of
the book. Having to hold the complexity of why
people are who they are and how they sometimes
pass misery from generation to generation. But, most
specifically, how the institution of racism shapes self
image.
And the book is about the poisonous qualities our
ideas of beauty hold. The ways in which they drive
us to madness. This is a book I can imagine needing
to read again.

I had to read this for my popular lit class, and I enjoyed it I guess, although reading Toni Morrison books always seems, to me, like tearing out my heart and stomping on it for fun.

i still like beloved better, but for a first novel, the bluest eye is amazing. although i’ve heard some complain (including morrison herself in the epilogue) about the fragmented style of the story, i think it works. it’s not as sophisticated as morrison’s style in beloved, but still powerful and relevant. and, of course, like any morrison novel, the language and story-telling is superb.