The Astonishing Color of After
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4.4 • 67 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A Time Magazine 100 Best YA Books of All Time Selection
A stunning, heartbreaking debut novel about grief, love, and family, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Celeste Ng.
Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.
Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.
Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.
"Emily X.R. Pan's brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book."– John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the wake of her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Leigh travels from the U.S. to Taiwan, where she hopes to come to terms with the tragedy while getting to know the maternal grandparents she has never met. Convinced that her mother has been reincarnated as a great red bird and eager to understand what happened, Leigh looks for symbols and meaning in the world around her; a stack of incense sticks grants her visions that allow insight into her mother's past and family history. At the same time, flashbacks illuminate Leigh's complicated relationship with her best friend Axel, whom she kissed the day her mother died. Pan's emotionally charged debut is a compelling exploration of grief and the insidiousness of depression. Her narrator, an artist by nature, sees the world through a colorful, complicated lens, and the novel is steeped in its Taiwanese setting. The subtlety and ambiguity of the supernatural elements place this story in the realm of magical realism, full of ghosts and complex feelings and sending an undeniable message about the power of hope and inner strength. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Beautiful/Sad Story
Going into this book. I wanted to give this book a good chance. And though I really enjoyed it. Some parts I was kinda like didn’t need to be there. Like the parts where the main character was thinking of her friend in another way. Just after her mother death. But I get it she is a young girl. Having all kinds of things going on. Other then that I really enjoyed this book. The colors being described so much didn’t bother me so much. Like it did other people who have read this book. I took has how are you feeling but turned into colors. I highly recommend this book. It does go by fairly quickly because the chapters are so short. And it goes from past to present and she is learning about where she came from and things she realized.
About Book-
This book is about a young girl Leigh Chen Sanders who recently her mother has passed away to suicide Oh she is learning how to dealt with her mother’s death. Figure out why was her mother so down what happened. Was it her fault or her fathers for always traveling for work and not being around. We see Leigh go from present to past a lot in this story. I really enjoyed it because we could see how her mother was. Leigh also started to believe that her mother had turned into a bird yo show her daughter things and to remember things too. Leigh learns that her mother parents are still alive and goes and visits them after the passing. Leigh learns a lot about them and her parents. In the end I really enjoyed this book. And sometimes when someone does kills them self’s we don’t know. But we try and Figure out way. Again beautiful and sad story but a good book to read.
Color me pleased
I am way, way past being a young adult so while I can see the attraction for that age group; I can and do attest that this is a wonderful story filled with the things that are most important, namely family and love and more love. Enjoy this lovely book.
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