Alice Kelly is eight years old when she comes home from school and finds her mother at home, completely blue. In a panic, she calls in the emergency services, who find that her mother is merely asleep. Confused, Alice checks again: her mother is still blue. But the color isn’t just on her, it’s around her, like a veil trailing behind her.
This is the first time Alice sees colors but from that moment on, it doesn’t go away; it only ever grows. She starts seeing the colors of other people, first her brothers, then the children and teachers in school as well. It scares her because she can see the effect of colors on the people around them and is afraid to get other people’s colors on her. She starts wearing sunglasses because the intensity of the colors gives her headaches.
Alice grows up in a dysfunctional home: her father has walked out and her mother can’t handle herself, much less her three children. When Alice speaks out about seeing colors and thinks she should see a doctor, Lily (Alice refuses to call her mom because she never acts like one), and younger brother Ollie don’t believe her and make fun of her. Older brother Hugh does believe her, and tries to help her to find out what is causing it. Hugh’s colors are pink and when Lily’s dark and angry colors try to get to him, they are deflected off him. It mesmerizes Alice. Lily’s colors do find an eager recipient in Ollie, who soaks them up and takes them on. This terrifies Alice.
The story follows Alice as she navigates through life, seeing colors but not always understanding what they mean: there are new colors, or unique colors. She sees colors of plants and trees as well and goes to parks to breathe in the calm colors of nature to escape the chaotic people colors. Her brother Hugh calls her skill a talent, but Alice calls it a curse.
When Alice starts to abuse her skills in a career in sales, it comes at a price and she crashes hard.
After this, she needs to re-learn, find a healthier way to deal with the skill, and slowly readjusts. It’s the beginning of something different and although Alice is still being pulled back to her old life by her mother, she is able to distance herself from that as well, moving forward and focusing on her own development.
And then one day she is startled to find a man who has no colors. This man becomes an obsession because she doesn’t know what it means. She is hopeful it’s only a good sign, but whatever it means, she won’t know for sure until she sees the man again. So she travels the train over and over, until she meets him there again, still without color. This time, she decides to follow him, to find out what it means.
This book had been lying in my tbr cabinet for a year. It was part of the big “spending spree of the summer of twenty-three” and I was disappointed in myself every time I picked it up and moved it aside to take out another book; I’ve loved books by this author without a fail (which was why I hadn’t hesitated buying this title) yet I couldn’t bring myself to start this one. I guess it’s down to the sixth sense of a bookworm, that tells us when it’s the right moment for a read. And thankfully I never force myself into reading anything, because the right moment was simply not until now, and I got to enjoy it oh so much.
The book is divided into sections named after colors and halfway through they start to mean more so you sense what is going to happen and I braced myself when I read “white”. (I went back to check on the earlier section colors because at the time they hadn’t meant as much.)
Alice is a great character and interesting to follow through life: she’s flawed, confused, and scared. She learns and grows and wants to be loved.
The story goes back and forth between past and present, but it’s easy to keep track.
The book is so nicely written, and pulled me in from the first page. It has the same feel as the other books I’ve read by this author: it’s warm, it’s slightly magical, and it’s real at the same time. If that’s something you like to read, please add this to your tbr. And read it whenever you feel the time is right.
Bookworm in the City 