- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: McClelland & Stewart; 1st Trade edition (Oct 28 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0771064756
- ISBN-13: 978-0771064753
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 2.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #886,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Like Booker-winner Monica Ali, British newcomer and Booker finalist Morrall creates an alienated yet immensely appealing heroine. But unlike Ali's protagonist, Kitty Wellington is at home in Britain's culture; it's her spectacularly dysfunctional family and a personal tragedy that bring her grief. Dangerously unstable after a miscarriage and her resulting inability to conceive again, Kitty sees other people and her environment in auras of color. A device brilliantly effective at times, this serves to establish Kitty's febrile, fantastical imagination. For three years, Kitty has lived in a flat next door to her loving, ineffectual husband, whose own problems (a limp; an obsession with order; a fear of unfamiliar places) render him similarly incapable of dealing with the world. But Morrall gradually reveals the real cause of Kitty's anguish: her lack of identity. Brought up helter-skelter by her irascible, eccentric artist father and four older brothers, Kitty has no memory of her mother, who died when she was three. Even in her most depressed moments, however, Kitty has wit and intelligence, even as her childlike impulsiveness and failure to foresee the consequences of her acts lead her to initiate a double kidnapping. Morrall artfully reveals the true story of Kitty's family in a suspenseful plot that unfolds like layers of an onion, meanwhile providing a convincing portrait of a woman striving for emotional survival.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Taking its title from a description of Neverland in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Morrall has created an ethereal novel of loss and redemption that is both heartbreaking and beautiful. While Kitty grew up with four much older brothers and an eccentric father, cared for by all five, she never stops asking questions about the mother she can't remember. Each brother answers differently and her father avoids the subject. When she miscarries her own child and cannot have another, her search for her mother intensifies, becoming confused with a search to replace her lost child. As the story is told through Kitty's engagingly intimate voice, the reader is compelled to follow her wanderings, searches, and flights. Characters are brilliantly drawn, the pacing is perfect, and the tone is never maudlin. A finalist for the Man Booker Prize, this is a novel to be savored. Elizabeth Dickie
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Growing Up Lost,
By
This review is from: Astonishing Splashes of Colour (Paperback)
In a weird mood I decided to buy most of the books that were shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize. I read Vernon God Little right after it won, and thought that it was an interesting experiment. Then a couple of days ago I picked up Clare Morrall's Astonishing Splashes of Colour. Is it a better first novel than Vernon God Little? Should it have won the Booker instead? I can't believe how inconsequential the question now seems to me. "DBC Pierre"'s novel was more daring, but it's Clare Morrall's that will remain with me. It's not perfect, but it's astonishingly well written for a first novel (although since Ms Morrall has grown children, according to the blurb, one assumes she has a lifetime of well chosen, deeply embedded reading). There are a couple of plot twists that I should have been anticipating, but frankly I was simply too engrossed with reading the novel to think that far ahead. There are other plot elements toward the end that are not explained at all, although I personally think this may be a strength rather than a weakness: life cannot always be neatly wrapped up in plot denouements. The description in the British paperback I read (with a different, superior cover than the American edition, for what it's worth) describes the novel as a reflection of Morrall's "interest in the dynamics of motherless family life and in synaesthesia -- a condition in which emotions are seen as colours." That makes it all sound very clinical. What it's about is more simply families and children, and the heartbreak you feel when the narrator says four pages from the end, "I don't think I've grown up. I don't feel important enough." If you've ever been a "lost child," or lost a child, or a mother, or a brother, or a sister, read it and respect its hard-earned tears and minor victories.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
childhood/parenthood under scrutiny; a fine first novel...,
By lazza (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Astonishing Splashes of Colour (Paperback)
'Astonishing Splashes of Colour' is a rather involved story of a young woman struggling to come to terms with her inability to have children, her own distorted childhood, and her strained relationship with her husband and her family. So yes, it covers a lot of ground. And as the story unravels it gets a bit ... melodramatic, unfortunately. Yet the book is anything but a disappointment. Clare Morrall's prose is fine, especially so for an inexperienced novelist. But it is her deep, compassionate characterization of the lead character that really salvages 'Astonishing Splashes of Colour'. The author's sincerity shines through.Bottom line: a mature look at painful memories. Recommended.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Book,
By
This review is from: Astonishing Splashes of Colour (Hardcover)
the book was in fantastic condition. Better then i thought actually.everything would have been perfect had it not taken about a month for me to recieve my book in the mail. i was pretty far behind on my english assignment because of this. but eventually it came, and in good condition.
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