The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan

Title: The Astonishing Color of After

Author: Emily XR Pan

Published: 2018

Type: Fiction

Pages: 460

Memory is a mean thing, slicing at you from the harshest angles, dipping your consciousness into the wrong colors again and again. A moment of humiliation, or devastation, or absolute rage, to be rewound and replaced, spinning a thread that wraps around the brain, knotting itself into something of a noose. It won’t exactly kil you, but it makes you feel the squeeze of every horrible moment. How do you stop it? How do you work the mind free? 

In Brief:

First YA book I’ve read in a while! But don’t let that deter you – it was still lovely to read as a less-young-adult, with deeply empathetic characters and a delicate balance between 1) teenage romance/angst and 2) a powerful message about coping with grief/loss.

Rating: 4

Synopsis:

Like many teenagers (at least in YA books), Leigh Chen Sanders is in love with her best friend, Axel Moreno. They’re both highly artistic, two of the only mixed-race students at their homogenous high school, and know each other better than anyone else. One summer day, they finally kiss in Axel’s basement; as this is happening, Leigh’s mother dies by suicide. The only note is crossed out, difficult to read: I want you to remember. 

After her death, Leigh’s mother turns into a bird. 

Leigh is absolutely sure of this. Of course, it’s complicated: she knows and can see the bird, but no one else can. After the bird delivers a mysterious box to Leigh’s house with some of her mother’s belongings that were supposedly destroyed, her emotionally distant father agrees to take her to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time.

During her time in Taiwan, Leigh tries desperately to find her mother the bird and understand what exactly her she wanted her to remember. She goes to places that were important to mother, even discovers a way to magically revisit old memories, experiencing them from her perspective as well as her family’s. She forges a bond with her grandparents despite not sharing a language, uncovering old family secrets and ghosts along the way. Meanwhile, she pulls away from Axel, struggling to cope with guilt and grief. The book alternates between Leigh’s experiences in Taiwan and her history, slowly revealing the growth of her relationship with Axel, as well as the progression of her mother’s depression, up until that pivotal day. 

Where I’m At:

I read this book around the same time as Little Fires Everywhere, as I discussed in my last post. To sum it up: very alone. 

I wrote in my last post about how much I valued my loneliness during this time, which is true. But not always. My moods seemed to swing on a more or less weekly basis – feeling comfortable and competent one week, deeply sad and insecure the next. 

I had to force myself to eat meals, often forgetting or just not feeling in the mood (I did eat them though, don’t worry Mom). I was also coping with missing Ashan. Breakups, or whatever you want to call this (because it’s not quite that), are always very physical to me. There’s a hollow feeling, a looseness in my body as if it doesn’t quite know how to be anymore. My own face startling me in the mirror. So there was that, plus just the anxiety of living during a crisis and being very isolated physically.

But it was and is manageable. I’d do things like bake or build furniture to remind my hands how to move. I streamed countless episodes of The Great British Baking Show to ease my mind, called friends or family and chatted virtually for hours to laugh, feel loved. I focused on work, trying to figure out a way to onboard new employees during this time in a way that’s welcoming and helpful. I ran further than I ever have before, tried to dye my hair (it didn’t stick), bought a bunch of things I don’t really need. My roommate is back as of a couple of days ago and having another human around already helps a lot. 

I liked reading this book during this time. The romance didn’t annoy me so much – it felt very sweet, hopeful and genuine in a way that actually really lifted my spirits. The characters’ grief far outweighed my own, and the support and love from friends and family really shone through powerfully. 

Getting Into it:

What really stood out to me most about The Astonishing Color of After is the characters. Leigh is a teenager, and as such she’s incredibly annoying at times – whiney, selfish, self-righteous. But that’s how teenagers are (I certainly was), and yet she managed to also be deeply empathetic and relatable. Though she must bear grief I cannot imagine, she also deals with normal teenage things like making friends, being “different,” her crush on Axel (which actually reminded me a lot of my high school boyfriend, so that was fun). It all felt very real, really made the reader root for Leigh as she struggles and matures. 

I also really liked Leigh’s relationship with her dad. He’s absent most of the book, traveling for work and leaving Leigh upon arriving to Taiwan. They butt heads and she often resents him, but slowly they come to understand each other better. She realizes that he’s also human, with his own difficulties, sometimes failing but trying his best. I wish the mother’s character and their relationship was similarly fleshed out – Leigh loves her deeply, but most of what we see of her in the flashbacks are when she was cripplingly depressed and unable to really be there.    

The structure of the book worked really well as well. Alternating between Leigh’s time in Taiwan and her past created a really good balance between the serious, heavy issue of grief and the lighter storyline about teenage romance/angst. Taiwan is the most important part, coping with her mother’s death the main plot of the story, but without the other part, it very easily could have become too dark. Pan allowed the reader to take a break in those chapters, while still expertly building the context to understand the story better.   

There were a few parts of the book I was iffy about: I sometimes got annoyed with how juvenile Leigh and some of her drama way, but that’s part and parcel with the genre – it’s also balanced with the memory journeys that provide some adult perspective. That said, I also wasn’t crazy about the use of magical realism – usually I adore it, but Pan seemed to walk a line where it was there but she didn’t entirely embrace it, which just felt a bit awkward at times. There was also the thing about color – as an artist, Leigh often describes her emotions or experiences in colors, often obscure or quirky ones like “manganese blue and new gamboge yellow and quinacridone rose.” It’s sort of cool as a device, but also sort of became old very quickly. Plus, at the end, Leigh makes the dramatic switch from drawing in charcoals to colors, which definitely made me roll my eyes. 

Overall though: the book was very good. The only thing I really wish was different was the length: the plot drags in the middle, with some irrelevant plot lines or poorly-explained characters, which made me lose interest for a bit. My hypothesis holds – like most others, the book should have been less than 400 pages. 

I’d especially recommend this book to teens (I wish I could’ve read it when I was younger), but older adults can definitely read it too. Though the topic is dark and sometimes got me close to tears, it’s beautifully written and the ending manages to be uplifting and strong, blending grief with hope in a way that I think everyone can take something from:

There’s still a mother-shaped hole inside me. It’ll always be there. But maybe it doesn’t have to be a deep, dark pit, waiting for me to trip and fall. Maybe it can be a vessel.