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

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan is one of the best novels I’ve read this year so far. It is about suicide and depression, about losing someone, about love, about art and colors, friendship and finding yourself. About parents. 

As you can see, the novel has many many layers. So many, in fact, it might have been a little too much but I didn’t think one layer wasn’t well worked out. 

It is the story about a teenage girl, Leigh, whose mother committed suicide. Her mother suffered from depression for a long time, and decides to commit suicide. The Astonishing Color of After starts with the suicide of Leigh’s mother and in the story Leigh tries to deal with this loss of her mother who, according to Leigh, has turned into a bird. 

Leigh and her father go to Leigh’s mother’s parents in Taiwan, because Leigh wants to understand her mother’s decision and craves answers. In Taiwan Leigh gets to know her mother better by learning things about her mother’s past. 

I really loved the composition of the story, because there were different periods of time. 

We have the ‘now’, where Leigh is in Taiwan with her grandparents figuring things out about her mother. We have the memories of the past, where Leigh is very little or not born and we learn about the past of Leigh’s family. 

And we have the memories of Leigh herself about the past two or three years which is mostly about her friendship with her best friend Axel, who know each other so well that they only have to ask ‘What color?’ to understand the other’s mood and feelings. The colors are also a big theme in this novel, of course. Leigh is an artist, and she knows a lot about the different colors. I don’t mean she knows blue from green etc, but she knows the different types of green and the different types of blue. In the novel, you don’t see Leigh giving colors to her emotions per se but you do see her referencing different colors of clothes people wear of the color of some element. I think all of these colors do each stand for a particular emotion, even if this isn’t mentioned directly.  

In the parts of the ‘now’, magical realism is very prominent. At first, I thought I wouldn’t like the use of magical realism in a story about loss, a story which is not fantasy but fiction. However, it was well explained (indirectly) why magical realism was used in this story and it was a perfect addition to The Astonishing Color of After. 

Because of the magical realism the reader (and Leigh) could get the entire story, the entire history of the family and made you as the reader understand a lot more about Leigh’s mother and her mother’s family. 

I also enjoyed the friendship/relationship part of the novel because it wasn’t really prominent. It was not the main focus of the novel, but it did make for a very complete story to add this to all the other layers of the novel. 

I think The Astonishing Color of After was, apart from dealing with the loss of a parent, a search to find oneself. Leigh gets to know herself more because she gets to know the past of her mother which was always missing. Without the magical realism used in the story, this search wouldn’t have been so prominent and clear. Leigh was able to find herself because of her mother’s suicide and the knowing of her mother’s past. 

I thought I would have a lot more to say about this novel, but it turns out I don't really want to write anything else about this since it would ruin the story for you if you haven’t read the novel yet. So I will be shutting up now, and you can get to reading this novel for yourselves!

I have given The Astonishing Color of After 4,5 stars. Not the highest score, because some parts of the ‘now’ were slowgoing and a little bit boring at some points.