CEBU, Philippines - “For the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there.”
Astonishing Splashes of Colour follows the life of Kitty, a woman who, in a sense, has never grown up. She lives life reviewing children’s books, visiting her obsessive compulsive husband James who lives in the apartment next door and fostering a growing obsession to replace her lost child.
Set in the city of Birmingham, the story centers on the unconventional Kitty and her eccentric family. In the beginning, it becomes imminent that something terrible has happened to Kitty: we meet her as she waits at the school gates with all the other parents but it is clear that she has no child. The reader soon learns that her young son Henry died at birth three years before and there's nothing but emptiness in her life.
Part detective story and part journey of discovery, Astonishing splashes of Colour is about the connection between art, colour, and life. Kitty’s complex character drives this novel as she relates her story in a jumbled state of consciousness. Her moods swing dramatically from high to low and are illuminated by an unusual ability to interpret people and emotions through colour.
Kitty struggles to uncover secrets of her childhood from her father and brothers, but their revelations threaten to overwhelm her tenuous hold on reality, leaving the reader both sympathetic and horrified at her descent towards madness.
The book is certainly a good read, and captures with a resounding force the universality of loss and the difficulties of families that are not so communicative. This is a story of heartbreak and loss, where secrets are maintained for years, and where life can often be a surreal and bizarre kaleidoscope of confusing colour.
The novel is full of drama, heartache, and lots of surprises that most readers will not see coming. Astonishing Splashes of Colour is and ultimately satisfying read, where the line between sanity, madness is explored with great creative skill.