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

[Barbara M]

I'm so glad that I listened to the audio for this book since there is a fair amount of Mandarin spoken and the narrator, Stephanie Cho, is evidently a native speaker or close to it. She did a great job.

This is a story of grief and love. Love within the family and an awakening love between two high school students who have been friends for years. Its also a story of art. The main character is Lee, half Caucasian and half Taiwanese. The book opens with the suicide death of Lee's Taiwanese mother. Her death is devastating to those who love her. She's suffered from depression but there is guilt on all sides that her loved ones couldn't be there to prevent this.

The story centers on Lee as she tries to come to grips with what has happened. Lee is an artist whose work gets high praise from everyone except her father who just wants her to pursue a different, more practical, career path. Lee's mother completely supports her art, she is an artist also but in music. Dory (her mother's American name) is an amazing pianist who gives piano lessons in her home. Lee's best friend, Axel, is also an artist but he uses music to complement his drawings. Lee labels her emotions with color. Axel often asks her "what color"? Even though she identifies everything in color, she works only in charcoal. I found that interesting. The colors she uses to label herself and others are very specific colors, not just red or blue but vermillion or cadmium and other colors I've never heard of, she has a Pantone chart in her mind.

Lee is convinced that her mother has become a beautiful red bird. The bird has called to her and she needs to ask her mother so many questions. She must find her. Lee and her father travel to Taiwan to meet Lee's grandparents, her mother was estranged from them. Lee must find a way to remember because that's what her mother asked her to do in the truncated letter she left.

The culture of Taiwan is very much part of the story. There's a touch of magic throughout the book, or is it just hope, grief, insomnia?? I found myself very caught up in a worry over Lee and what she's going through. The story is told though Lee's eyes and its such a difficult time for her that the tension increases steadily.

Well done by both the author and the narrator. Well worth reading for adults too even though this is labeled as YA and has teen main characters. There are still the grandparents and the parents who are a huge part of the story.