I listened to the author read this book on Audible. She is a very good reader of her own work, as is Sherman Alexie, whose book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian I also listened too.
The main character in The Bluest Eye is mostly passive victim, and hence the plot of the novel is inherently weak on some level, though the novel compensates for that in other ways. It is mostly about black racism against other blacks, and against themselves. There are a lot of virtuoso passages and heavy doses of didacticism. She is good at character and setting, and cultural observation.
The Alexie novel features a very pro-active protagonist who takes action to change his life by going to a white school just outside the edge of the reservation. The antagonists are mostly other Indians, who resent him for leaving the reservation (and beat him up a lot before he leaves). I listened after to some interviews with the author, and then I realized that it was supposed to be a young adult novel. Well, obviously, but I wasn't thinking about that while listening. It is very funny and very well-written, in the Bildungsroman tradition. The narrative tension comes from the fact that he is at odds with his best friend, and is able to achieve things by entering the white world. It's pretty obvious that the protagonist is the author himself, lightly fictionalized.
Subtlety is fine, but sometimes you want someone just to say things openly, and to have some Subject Matter. I have not particular investment now in being high brow in fiction reading.
I'm reading a Sciascia novel in Italian, El giorno della civetta. There is a mafia killing in Sicily and a police captain solving it. I can read a page and understand nothing, read another page and get almost everything, so I have to circle back a lot. I guess the owl is nocturnal, so day-break is not a good time for it? It's from a line from Henry VI.
