Originally published in the 1960s, this novel received little attention and then just quietly slipped away, but now it has been reprinted many years later and it is finally getting the recognition it deserves.
Set in Ohio in the years following the great depression, the book centres on the tragic life of Percola, a badly neglected twelve year old who has been raped and made pregnant by her own father. Her mother had never shown her any affection and much preferred the company of the white people she worked for. Neighbours saw Pecola as a toddler wandering around the streets crying for attention, but somehow she had become a dark warning of everything they dreaded, so she was always shunned, and other children were bought indoors rather than be allowed to play with her.
This is not an easy read and shows the frightening inevitability of lasting damage to a person who has been pushed aside by everyone since birth. Pecola lives in a predominantly black community but even the people around her show prejudice against very black skin. Pecola is very dark and was not born with a pretty face so nature has conspired to add to her troubles. After she has been made pregnant she becomes obsessed with the idea that having blue eyes would make her attractive and everything wrong in her world would be resolved.
As a reader you can do nothing to help Pecola, and it is hard to keep reading as events unfold. I would like to think that children don't suffer like this any more, but there will always be some that live on the fringes of a community where no-one wants to look very closely at things they don't want to know. We should always act on suspicion as doing nothing doesn't do anything to help anyone.
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