Pure Colour
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.4
(116)
Sheila Heti
Winner of the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award in FictionShortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize in FictionNamed a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vulture, The Times Literary Supplement, and morePure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.Here we are, just living in the first draft of Creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she’s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.
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More Details:
Author
Sheila Heti
Pages
224
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published Date
2022-02-15
ISBN
0374603960 9780374603960
Community ReviewsSee all
"Grief sets the stage for such big questions, which is where this story really sinks its teeth in. This is short, but dense, and quite lovely."
C
CaitVD
"While I enjoyed some of the more ethereal and metaphorical parts of the novel, the unique writing style wasn’t quite my taste. As a whole I found myself frequently getting lost or not being able to make sense of the literary devices. For example, I didn’t get the point of any of the sexualized metaphors or dialogue. That being said, there are a lot of great quotes and insights; I just don’t see myself being drawn to reading more of this author’s works like I had hoped I would after reading this."
M B
Mike Byers
"2.75"
Hillary Cargo
"New favorite"
F
Franky
"This book was all style, with very little actually being said. It could have heavily benefitted from more workshopping on the actual idea and plot of the novel. Gun to my head I could not tell you a single thing about Mira or Anna, except that Mira works at a lamp shop. None of the characters had any character, and there’s no reason to care about the grief that Mira is going through because we know nothing about her father. Maybe I missed some of the development with the characters because it was buried beneath unnecessarily flowery language. I could not give you a plot synopsis (which is maybe why there aren’t any written) because the plot here was so nonexistent."
Hailey Showalter
