Book Review: "Pure Colour" by Sheila Heti

“It is only when you get older that everyone makes you feel bad about being alone, or implies that spending time with other people is somehow better, because it proves you to be likeable. But being unlikeable wasn't the reason she was alone. She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living.”

- Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

I bought this book mainly because it was on offer and in my Amazon Recommendations. I had scanned through the premise online without spoilers to try and find out what was going on in the text. It was surprising how sparsely it was described and how little was offered in the way of a description. This book is definitely different and it was a little bit hard to follow since there was so much philosophy going on. For a bit, I could not decide whether I liked it and that is why it is getting just over half marks.

Mira leaves home to study somewhere else and she works in a store selling lamps. She has a favourite lamp as she often admits that customers might however, the one thing she thinks about more than anything is this mystical character called Annie. Annie is a bit of a strange character because even after reading the book, I don't think I know anything about her too well. It seems like she was supposed to be purposefully elusive, but honestly that got tiring and quite frustrating after a while given that the book is really quite short. So whilst I enjoyed the idea of Annie in ways she was described, I have to take marks away on the fact that there just was not enough of her character in the book. It was a bit of a let down.

Mira's father dies and so she reflects on the fact that she didn't spend enough time with him. She chooses to communicate with his spirit in this almost Freudian way which makes me think this author has strayed quite far from god. Then there's this big extended metaphor of a leaf which was really difficult to follow. I feel like the descriptions of Mira's relationship with her father do not let the reader into Mira's old life before she left home enough. There is something missing and I honestly can't tell what it is. It is well-written in plot and ideas, but it is also extraordinarily bland.

Annie disappears for this huge chunk of the book where Mira is grieving and the book is interspersed with what looks like lazy religious philosophy which, in the grand scheme of things, the reader couldn't care less about. Many people I have read reviewing this kind of give up on the book because of these chapters. Again, they were well-written, I'm not knocking the talent of the actual writing - they were simply misplaced and often just too airy-fairy. They didn't impact the reader's experience of the story in any way and in the end, felt more like filler for a book which was nowhere near long enough to be a novel in the first place.

The ending to the book is unsurprising and the grief flips itself on its head. I felt like this was the time for the author to start making these comparisons, because there is a lot to explore about the ending. However, the author chooses not to write about this event for more than a couple of pages. I felt like that was a missed opportunity because there was a lot of potential given what the rest of the book is about. It kind of made you feel like the book was unfinished in a way and again, it was pretty frustrating.

All in all, though I think that the writer clearly has talent when it comes to actually writing, there is something still clearly missing here. This book needed more and yes, it also needed some thorough editing. There is a feeling in this book of loss and grief, yes, but there really is not much else. At just over 250 pages, it is quite a short read for what it is trying to explore. It needed to be longer, meatier and more intense.