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Summary
Summary
A Time Magazine 100 Best YA Books of All Time Selection
A stunning, heartbreaking debut novel about grief, love, and family, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Celeste Ng.
Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.
Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she 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.
Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.
"Emily X.R. Pan's brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book."- John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down
Author Notes
Emily X.R. Pan currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, but was originally born in the Midwestern United States to immigrant parents from Taiwan. She received her MFA in fiction from the NYU Creative Writing Program, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. She is the founding editor-in-chief of Bodega Magazine , and a 2017 Artist-in-Residence at Djerassi. She is the author of The Astonishing Color of After and An Arrow to the Moon . Visit Emily online at exrpan.com, and find her on Twitter and Instagram:@exrpan.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In the wake of her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Leigh travels from the U.S. to Taiwan, where she hopes to come to terms with the tragedy while getting to know the maternal grandparents she has never met. Convinced that her mother has been reincarnated as a great red bird and eager to understand what happened, Leigh looks for symbols and meaning in the world around her; a stack of incense sticks grants her visions that allow insight into her mother's past and family history. At the same time, flashbacks illuminate Leigh's complicated relationship with her best friend Axel, whom she kissed the day her mother died. Pan's emotionally charged debut is a compelling exploration of grief and the insidiousness of depression. Her narrator, an artist by nature, sees the world through a colorful, complicated lens, and the novel is steeped in its Taiwanese setting. The subtlety and ambiguity of the supernatural elements place this story in the realm of magical realism, full of ghosts and complex feelings and sending an undeniable message about the power of hope and inner strength. Ages 12-up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
My mother is a bird, declares Leigh, a mixed-raced (hun-xie) Taiwanese American teen. She has seen her mother reincarnated as a large red bird and knows that Mom is trying to guide Leigh in understanding the reasons for her tragic suicide. (Leigh also must contend with the crushing guilt of kissing her best friend, Axel, on the day Mom died.) Leigh travels to Taipei to stay with her maternal grandparents, with whom she can barely communicate. There she embarks on a fervent and grief-stricken odyssey riddled with insomnia and confusion, piecing together her mothers past by lighting magical incense sticks that allow her to witness fragments of others memories. Pan portrays Leigh as a talented visual artist, telling her story with a vividness punctuated by a host of highly specific hues: a cerise punch to the gut, viridian spiraling thoughts, a heart bursting with manganese blue and new gamboges yellow and quinacridone rose. Some readers might be put off by the abundant imagery, but italong with the threads of Taiwanese mysticism and her mingling of ghosts (gui) with the livingcreates a hypnotic narrative. roxanne hsu Feldman (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Leigh shatters after her mother's suicide who wouldn't? but when a huge, beautiful red bird appears and calls her name in her mother's voice, she doesn't think she's hallucinating; she's sure the bird is actually her mother, and not some William Faulkner stream-of-consciousness metaphorical crap. When the bird brings Leigh a box of letters and photos from her mother's childhood in Taiwan, she convinces her white father to take her to Taipei to meet her mother's estranged parents for the first time. There she digs into her family's past, visiting her mother's favorite places and keeping an eye out for the bird, which grows ever more elusive the longer Leigh searches. In Leigh's strong, painterly voice and with evocative, fantastical elements, Pan movingly explores grief and loss, as well as Leigh's meaningful search for connection to her secretive mother and her exploration of the many facets of her identity. Particularly laudable is Pan's sensitive treatment of mental illness: Leigh learns many heartbreaking things about her mother's life, but those moments are never offered as explanations for suicide; rather, it's the result of her mother's lifelong struggle with severe, debilitating depression. Dynamic, brave Leigh emerges vividly in Pan's deft hand, and her enthralling journey through her grief glows with stunning warmth, strength, and resilience.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
First love, shocking family secrets and witches that prowl the streets of Brooklyn in three novels to kickstart summer escapes. WHAT IS THE color of love or of loss? And, more important, how might they color our lives? In her lyrical and suspenseful fantasy novel, THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER (LITTLE, BROWN; 480 PP., $18.99; AGES 14 AND UP), Emily X. R. Pan explores love, depression and suicide, and the terrible places where those three intersect. Leigh's mother, Dory, has taken her life on the very day of Leigh's first kiss with Axel, the friend that Leigh has loved for years. Leigh is driven by her art and by the way she understands emotion and events through color. So when a red bird arrives on the night of her mother's funeral, calling out her name , Leigh knows it is her mother in a new form. The bird's delivery of a box containing a jade necklace and photographs sets in motion a trip to Taipei with her American father, where she will meet family she was unaware of and finally uncover the long string of secrets that helped bring her mother to despair. The novel is chilling in its suspense in two main plot lines: how her relationship with Axel grew, and the source of her mother's depression. Pan makes the surreal events hover somewhere between magical realism and hallucination, with lush details of Leigh's time in Taipei providing an expansive look inside Taiwanese culture. With the aid of incense sticks Leigh finds in a drawer and the personal objects she must destroy in order to get to the visions of past, she is able to revisit events and memories - her own and those of her loved ones. This device can sometimes feel forced, but the larger questions it raises - how and why do we remember events? - is compelling. And the slow reveal of Leigh's relationship with Axel and the events that led to her mother's despondency offer a satisfying payoff. The anatomy of any suicide is a painful one for the survivors. But here is where Pan's novel shines most. She never shies away from the awful questions that are left in the wake of such a loss. Who is at fault? Did we love her wrong? How did we fail? But with each flashback and discovery about that long year when she was faling in love - and when her mother was falling apart-what emerges is a story about love with all its limitations and complications, and the story of how a girl and her passions can survive it. "FROGGY WELSH THE FOURTH IS trying to get inside my jeans." So begins Carolyn Mackler's the universe is expanding and SO AM I (BLOOMSBURY, 304 PP., $17.99; AGES 14 and UP), the long-awaited sequel to "The Earth, My Butt and Other Round Things" (though it stands on its own, too). And what has happened to the curvaceous Virginia Shreves since last we met? Lor one thing, she's discovered that she's not willing to stick with a boyfriend at all costs, as she might have done earlier. But more important, it's time for Virginia to figure out how to survive as part of an affluent and image-obsessed New York City family. Her brother, Byron, finally faces the legal consequences of participating in a drunken date rape of Annie Mills at Columbia University. Complicating matters is that after a chance meeting at a bagel shop, Virginia starts falling in love with the one guy in the world she shouldn't be dating at all: Annie's brother, Sebastian. The themes of social and familial estrangement and body image that grounded the earlier work remain strong. Virginia's parents continue their toxic focus on body type, fitness and achievement. (This is, after all, the world of going to Harvard, country homes in Connecticut and yoga studios in your backyard - and of wondering if that pesky rape charge will be held against the family at the country club.) Classmates still make crude comments about "thick girls" and the "chubby chasers" who fall for them. Mackler captures the maddening thoughtlessness of it all as Virginia and Sebastian's love blooms during secret dates at well-known New York City locations like the High Line and the Brooklyn Bridge. Lor much of the novel, Virginia is still in mortal combat against her own insecurities and the tendency to see everyone - especially herself - through the lens of body type and beauty. And the male gaze, even from a decent guy like Sebastian, still holds power. But she is, in fact, expanding. She's aspiring, now openly, to be a writer, standing up to her parents' views and decisions , and replacing her list "How to Make Sure Skinny Girls Aren't the Only Ones Who Have Boyfriends" with a more bodypositive focus. If Byron's comeuppance might seem to fall a bit short, especially in the face of the #MeToo movement, Virginia's struggle to access her voice and her agency does not. Readers will root for her as she figures out the conflicting terrain of loving family and loving yourself at the same time. Borget your worries about the zombie apocalypse. It's the casimuertos you should really fear. IN BRUJA BORN (SOURCEBOOKS FIRE, 352 PP., $17.99; AGES 14 AND up) the latest from Zoraida Córdova, Lula Mortiz, freshly returned from her banishment to the underworld realm of Los Lagos, leads an adventure against classmates who've become the bloodthirsty undead. Lula's sweet and mere mortal boyfriend, Maks, dumps her, leaving her longing to find a way to restore things between them to how they've always been. But when a bus crash on the way to a soccer game kills the entire team - and leaves Maks in a coma - Lula, the lone survivor, makes a decision about how far she's willing to go to keep him with her. With the help of her magical sisters, Alex and Rose, she decides to use her healing powers to bring Maks back. Unfortunately, Lady La Muerte, the goddess of death, wants him, too. And magic of this kind brings unexpected consequences not just for Maks, but for all the formerly dead students. The gods - and Lulu's parents - are not at all amused. It's not long before Lula discovers the horrible choices involved in fixing things that her magic has made gravely wrong. Córdova keeps the flame on high as Lulu and her sisters strike risky deals and face demons in an effort undo their mistake. At times, the plot complications are tricky to follow - this is the second book in Cordova's "Brooklyn Brujas" series - but the action is never less than satisfying, and, more, the fantasy is cleverly anchored to the very relatable details of the novel's Latinx characters. There are truth serums disguised as cafecitos, herbs with magical powers, prayer altars and characters hailing from Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina. Brooklyn and all its "haunts" are on full display, too: the N train, Coney Island, Prospect Park, Bay Ridge - nowhere is safe! In Cordova's world, the Brooklyn we love is also a borough where particularly evil brujas run bakeries and where old brownstones serve as headquarters for the magical pros who keep order over all things mystical in the tristate area. Pantasy and zombie fans looking for flavor - organ-meat, in particular - will not leave disappointed. meg MEDINA is the author of "Burn, Baby, Burn" and many other books for young readers. Her next novel, "Merci Suarez Changes Gears," will be published in September.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Leigh comes home to the unimaginable-her mother, who has always been depressed, has committed suicide. As her grief swells, Leigh believes in her fog that her mother has not died but her mother's spirit has now turned into a vivid bird who brings Leigh gifts, both physical and in the form of memories. Trying to put all the pieces together, her father and Leigh travel to Taiwan, where her mother immigrated from to the United States after meeting Leigh's father. She has never met her mother's family, and does not understand why her mother never spoke to Leigh about her parents or her childhood. Seeking answers for these questions and more, Leigh's father leaves her in Taiwan to stay with her grandparents. The present-day is woven with flashback memories; Pan's writing takes readers on a journey filled with so much emotion, color, and such well-developed characters with a touch of magic, readers will come to the ending drained and fulfilled at the same time. An exploration of grief and what it means to accept a loved one's suicide, this book's lyrical and heart-rending prose invites readers to take flight into their own lives and examine their relationships. VERDICT Pan's debut novel is not to be missed. Give this to fans of magical realism titles and any reader who is battling grief.-Stephanie Charlefour, formerly of Wixom Public Library, MI © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Grief, regret, and loneliness form the backdrop of a family's life following a suicide, but a path for healing reveals itself in the form of a magical red bird. Fifteen-year-old Leigh Chen Sanders, daughter of an Irish-American sinologist father and a Taiwanese pianist mother, is in love with her best friend, Axel Moreno. The two have much in common: as well as sharing a passion for art, he is half Filipino and half Puerto Rican and also stands out in their racially homogeneous school. However, a rift has opened between them since their first kiss coincided with the day Leigh's mother took her own life. Now left alone with a distant, judgmental father, Leigh is directed by a red bird she is convinced is her mother to visit her estranged grandparents in Taiwan. There, she seeks out places that were meaningful to her mother and uncovers long-hidden family secrets. The Taiwanese setting is enticingly portrayed, and the magical realism of the bird spirit offers transportive flashback journeys into the family's history. The stigma of mental illness and the terrible loneliness of not being accepted form the heart of this emotionally honest tale, but the device of having Leigh express her feelings in terms of color is distracting and adds little to the story. An evocative novel that captures the uncertain, unmoored feeling of existing between worldsculturally, linguistically, ethnically, romantically, and existentiallyit is also about seeking hope and finding beauty even in one's darkest hours. (author's note, resources) (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
