the book bum

     The best part of this book was its structure.  I've never read a book whose structure served its message so perfectly. The narrative of  Bluest Eye  is built around Pecola Breedlove, a young African-American girl living in Ohio in the late '30s, early '40s.  The story is never told from Pecola's perspective, however.  It is told from the perspectives of the people around her who destroy her.  I won't say how she is destroyed or what these people do to her.  But I will say that they are ordinary people, neighbors and friends and family members, whose acts of racism eventually tear her apart. Many of these acts are not drastic or unusual, and their very ordinariness forces the reader to reflect on the effects of his or her own actions and prejudices.       Morrison chose to write each chapter from the point of view of a different character.  Only one narrator, one of Pecola's friends, recurs in multiple chapte...

     Shout-out to my friend Isabelle for lending me this book!  We have started an informal book club, meaning the two of us lend each other our favorite books and discuss them at lunch.  Anyway, I probably would not have read past this book's detailed and dull beginning   if she had not recommended it so strongly.  And I am so glad that I did!      Yes, the beginning is dull - a description of a murder trial, which I had no emotional connection to at first - but after that things pick up nicely.  We learn that the trial takes place on an American fishing island not long after World War II, and that a Japanese man has been accused of murdering a man of German descent.  Both are American veterans, but the islanders don't see it that way because of the accused man's race.  This would be a fascinating story in itself, but Guterson weaves a billion other story threads around the central cord of the trial.  These thr...