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. --Ce texte provient d'une �dition qui n'est plus publi�e ou qui est non diponible.

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 --Ce texte provient d'une �dition qui n'est plus publi�e ou qui est non diponible.

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6 internautes sur 7 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :

5.0�toiles sur 5 Growing Up Lost, Nov. 29 2003

Par	D. Bellomy (Seoul Korea, Republic of) - Voir tous mes commentaires (REAL NAME)

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.

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2 internautes sur 3 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :

4.0�toiles sur 5 childhood/parenthood under scrutiny; a fine first novel..., Janv. 4 2004

Par	lazza (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) - Voir tous mes commentaires

'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.

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4.0�toiles sur 5 Intensely Colored Emotions, Oct. 6 2003

Par	Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - Voir tous mes commentaires (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Astonishing Splashes of Colour (Paperback)

Astonishing Splashes of Colour, Clare Morrall's first published novel, takes its title from a description of Peter Pan's Neverland. It follows the life of an eccentric Birmingham woman who in a sense never has grown up. She is impulsive, doesn't follow conventional daily time tables and can be rather mischievous. But like a child she is someone you have an immediate affection for if only, for no other reason, the purity of her response to the world. It is revealed that Kitty reacts this way because of family tragedies that have impaired her ability to act rationally and develop a secure sense of self. She lives a kind of improvised life reviewing children's books, occasionally visiting her husband who lives in the apartment next door and fostering a strange obsession for her nieces as well as other children. The remote nature of her family relations makes it all too clear why this woman maintains a childish need for love and attention.

The great strength of this novel is the strong personality of the protagonist as she relates her tale in a barely chronological sequence (which suits her jumbled state of consciousness). We follow her mood swings which switch dramatically from joy to deep depression. These are illuminated by the way she views people that emanate certain colors in accordance with her emotions. She can be at one time horribly remote and at another time excruciatingly too personal. The plot quickly gains speed as the novel progresses revealing startling details about Kitty's past. It's to the author's credit that a seemingly innocent journey to the sea side can take on such dark undertones. We feel simultaneously sympathetic and horrified with Kitty for embarking on this impetuous journey. For all this novel's local flavor, it conveys universal truths about the bonds of family, the need for love and the subsistence of childhood innocence into adulthood.

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3.0�toiles sur 5 Voice hard to relate to
Didn't love it. Anytime the narrative voice has a mental illness I find it very hard to stay connected. Ok, but not something I'd really recommend to friends.

Publi� le Ao� 9 2004

5.0�toiles sur 5 Nominated for the Booker Prize
I read this book when it first came out in February 2003.
I think it's truly wonderful.
The novel is longlisted for the BOOKER PRIZE (and I suspect will also be... Read more

Publi� le Ao� 24 2003

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