The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, 215 pages

Pecola Breedlove has what could generously be called a rough life. She lives in a two-room apartment (which is really just a storefront that's been converted, in name only, to an apartment) with her always-fighting parents and her always-running-away brother. She dreams of becoming invisible and of having blue eyes, both of which she believes have the ability to change her life. Told through the eyes of Pecola and one of her classmates, with backstories on some of the adults, Morrison's debut novel illustrates the world of a young black girl in a small Ohio town in 1940. It's a brutal story, beautifully told.