Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - The Astonishing Color of After

Every so often, you come across a story that is beautiful because of its sadness. A story that is gut-wrenchingly honest, that will rip your heart to pieces before putting it back together to create something better than before. A story that takes one of the worst things that could happen, which is often shrouded in darkness, in black, and shows how full of color it really is.

Leigh is a high school student whose mother has committed suicide. In the aftermath, Leigh's father takes Leigh to meet the Taiwanese grandparents whom she has never met. As she grieves for her mother, she also struggles to come to terms with the fact that at the same time her mother was taking her own life while she was kissing her best friend and long-time crush. While Leigh is in Taiwan, getting to know her maternal grandparents, she uncovers family secrets and searches for her mother, who she is convinced turned into a bird.

The emotions in this book are real and raw, and Pan's use of prose is so vivid that Leigh's pain became my pain, her struggles became my struggles, and her hope became my own. Pan's use of descriptors, combined with a sort of synesthesia, the feelings Leigh is facing take on a whole new level.

Depression is a topic that is very hard to deal with, and very hard to talk about, but the first-person point of view that is used adds a level of depth to the story. It is frank and raw, and it manages to convey a level of complexity that is incredibly realistic. Through Leigh's story, we get to see how depression affects not just the person who is suffering from the mental illness but also affects everyone around them.

Following her mother's death, Leigh is convinced that her mother turned into a bird, and that bird is trying to tell her something. Though Leigh isn't sure what that is, she knows the first step is going to Taiwan. As Leigh visits different areas where her mother grew up in her search for the bird, she experiences flashbacks that reveal things about her family that were previously unknown. As she learns more about her mother's past, Leigh learns about herself.

Leigh wants nothing more than to learn why her mother committed suicide. Was there a reason? Was there a singular event that caused it? Did someone say or do something? One of the things Leigh learns is that there is no reason. There is no causal event; there is no person to blame. The reason, the cause, is depression and the suffering it causes. As Leigh reaches this understanding, she is able to work through her own grief.

Though most of the book takes place in Taiwan with her father absent, the flashbacks Leigh experiences shed a lot of light on the struggles they have had in their relationship. Those struggles were only exacerbated by the depression and how each of them was dealing - or not dealing - with it. As much as I wanted to yell at Leigh's father for how he seemed to abandon his family in the time of their greatest need, how he seemed to make decisions without thinking about what Leigh might want or need, I could also see how much he was hurting, and how much that hurt was influencing his own actions. The flashback scene towards the end of the book where he visits Leigh's grandparents on one of his business trips was like a turning point in his character for me, and the culmination at the end and the conversation that Leigh and her dad have at the end was... I'm not sure I have the right word for what it was. Right. Good. Hopeful. Perfect. All describe what happens, but none really encapsulate it fully.

I don't know that I will return to this book because it is a raw look at depression, but I am very glad I experienced it, and I wouldn't change that at all. For this book, I was able to listen to the audiobook, which was narrated by Stephanie Hsu. Her narration was wonderful, and the combination of the story and her reading it brought me to tears several times. I definitely recommend listening to this book when you read it. But whether you decide to listen to the audiobook or read the book yourself, you should definitely experience it.

I am still blown away that this novel is a debut novel. I am definitely looking forward to reading more from this author. But, until then...

What color?

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