Gabby's Reviews > The Astonishing Color of After

Closer to a 4.5 stars

"Memory is mean thing, slicing at you from the harshest angles, dipping your consciousness into the wrong colors again and again."

Wow, this book was gorgeously written and heart-breaking and amazing. This story follows a young girl named Leigh who has just discovered her mother has killed herself. This story is about her discovering her families history that she never knew about, and going to her Mother's birth place, and dealing with an absurd amount of grief. This book made my heart feel so heavy, and it really dives deep into issues like depression, and suicide.

This book is gorgeously written. I love the way Leigh uses color to describe her emotions and everything around her. I love the way this book emphasizes how important memories are, and how our memories remind us how to live and our memories make us who we are.

Depression, I opened my mouth to say, but the word refused to take shape. Why was it so hard to talk about this? Why did my mother’s condition feel like this big secret?
...
“She’s forgotten how to be happy,” I told him.

I think this book hit a little close to home because my Mom has always battled with depression, much like Leigh's mom in this book (my Mom's never got as bad as her Mom's, but its still something she deals with on a daily basis). Because of that this book made me so emotional multiple times because I could never imagine anything like this happening to my Mom and it broke my heart to watch Leigh deal with it all.

“Once upon a time we were the standard colors of a rainbow, cheery and certain of ourselves. At some point, we all began to stumble into the in-betweens, the murky colors made dark and complicated by resentment and quiet anger. At some point, my mother slid so off track she sank into hues of gray, a world drawn only in shadows.”

I also loved the romance between Leigh and her best friend Axel. It was portrayed so realistically in flashbacks and they've been best friends their whole lives, and they were just cute as hell. I also loved getting to see the love story between Leigh's parents in flashbacks (they were hella cute too) and learning about her families history was so powerful.

The only reason I knocked off a star is because I felt like this book was too long for what it was, and it took me a long time to get into it. The first few chapters were really good, then it started dragging a lot in the middle, but the last hundred pages were so so so good. So the story is fucking amazing even though I still feel like it could be cut down considering it's nearly 500 pages.

This book also kind of reminds me of A Million Junes because of the magical realism and the parent dying but still being there somehow. This story focuses on the mother/daughter relationship while A Million Junes focuses on the father/daughter relationship.

I can't believe this is a debut novel and I can't wait to read more of Emily X.R. Pan's gorgeous writing in the future!

"Memories that tell a story, if you look hard enough. Because the purpose of a memory is to remind us how to live."