#24 in Literary fiction
The Bluest Eye
- 185
- Pages
- about 3.5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Bluest Eye” shows in under two hundred pages how a child can learn to despise her own face. Morrison follows Pecola, a Black girl in Ohio, called ugly so often that she longs for blue eyes, and refuses to soften what that longing costs. It is dark, disturbing and moving, and it includes sexual violence that some readers wish they had been warned about.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Bluest Eye is the first novel written by American author Toni Morrison and published in 1970. It takes place in Lorain, Ohio, and tells the story of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grew up following the Great Depression. She is consistently regarded as "ugly" due to her mannerisms and dark skin. As a result, she develops an inferiority complex, which fuels her desire for the blue eyes she equates with "whiteness".
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.0 across 461 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 76% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Literary fiction average of 8.1. That is how 8.1 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.4 | 31 | 7% |
| Google Books | 7.0 | 27 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 403 | 87% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Bluest Eye?
It has 185 pages — shorter than 92% of the ranked books in Literary fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Literary fiction — with scores between 7.8 and 8.5, closest to this book.
