REVIEW: Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan

Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. She travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, Leigh is determined to find her mother, the bird. 

In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.

This is truly an elegantly poignant read filled with just as much realistic emotion as it is magical realism.  Readers are in for a real treat with Pan's debut novel.  Having myself recently experienced grief upon losing multiple loved ones, I found this narrative not only mesmerizing as well as haunting but also cathartic and hopeful. Perhaps this final quote sums up the novel's prose and experience best:

What is memory? It's not something you can physically hold, or see, or taste. It's just nerve impulses jumping between neurons. Sometimes it's a matter of choice. Other times it's self-preservation, or protection [...] Because the purpose of memory, I would argue, is to remind us how to live" (p. 464).

This is a beautiful book. Have your tissues handy.

REVIEW: The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos

Imogene Scott knows little of her mother except for carefully plotted bedtime stories told to her by her bestselling medical mystery writing father. How they met: her father, a forensic pathologist, her mother, a mysterious woman coming to identify a body. She left when Imogene was merely a baby, leaving her daughter to know that her mother was a lost soul, possessed by loneliness and "troubled waters."

Now 17, Imogene has grown up with her mother's absenteeism as well as learning to navigate her father's own sometimes crippling depressions. When he disappears mysteriously, neither Imogene nor her stepmother know where to find him. Convinced he's looking for her mother, Imogene decides to use her detective skills compiled from a lifetime of reading her father's books in order to track him down, but also find the answers to many of her own questions.

There's a great maturity and layered presence to this novel with appeal to a variety of audiences.  On one hand, this is a good mystery. Someone is missing, there are a plethora of questions about said missing person and other events and the protagonist sets out to solve the puzzle and essentially save the day.  On the other hand, this is certainly a story about exploring identity and coming of age. Imogene searches not only for her parents but also for her sense of self, how her childhood has shaped who she is and what all this might mean for her future.

I enjoyed this book. It is well written with developed characters. I particularly liked the pacing. As a reader, there is a drive to continue on so that you too can find Imogene's mother and the whereabouts of her father.  I loved the ambiguity but also the sense of hope at the ending.

Final rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Follow the author on Twitter: @RebeccaPodos


#TheMysterOfHollowPlaces #mystery #YAlit #teen #depression #identity #family

REVIEW: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's amazing novel following a young woman's decent into insanity.  Esther Greenwood is young, beautiful and talented.  However, she is slowly sinking.  Readers follow her path into darkness with fear that this decent will be her last. This novel is haunting in its echos of Plath's own feelings and experience with crippling depression.

This has always been on my radar as a classic I wanted to and should read.  I'd missed it or delayed reading it for one reason or another.  With the 2015 Popsugar Reading Challenge, I finally committed to get to this powerful and amazingly written classic since it fit the "Book You Should Have Read in School" catagory.

Plath certainly didn't pull any punches while depicting Esther's decent into madness or while exploring the stark truths for women at that time.  It's pretty horrifying that this is fiction based in fact but its an important aspect of the past that should not be forgotten. What I liked most about the novel was the ambiguous ending.  Does Esther flourish once she gets out of the santatarium or is it just a reprieve before she begins the decent once more?

I thought a lot about how some students read this in high school. I know the accelerated students did when I was in school.  I'm the last one to advocate challenging a book but I'm pretty shocked it was part of the curriculum given the graphic nature of the descriptions and themes. I don't think a teenager can grasp the whole importance of the narrative that would come with more maturity and life experiences. I wish I would have read it in undergrad or grad school since it would be a powerful book to discuss and write about within an academic setting.

Overall, I enjoyed the book because of the stellar writing but it was rather emotional, especially to read it in a time of year that's supposed to be happy. I recommend the audio as narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She's exactly who I might picture as Esther.

Final rating: 5 out of 5 stars


#classic #depression #suicide #feminism #SlyviaPlath #BellJar #audiobook