The Astonishing Color of After

The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan
Little Brown, 2018 472 pages
Grades 8-Up
Magical Realism

Two alternating narratives tell the story of Leigh, a biracial artistic teen in a cross-section of her life. The before chapters trace her first two years of high school, where she is in love with her best friend, Axel, and we see the back and forth confusion of their relationship. The two friends eventually kiss on the last day of tenth grade and Leigh returns home to discover that her mother has committed suicide. Now we enter the world of after, where a red bird has entered Leigh's life. She feels compelled by the bird to journey to Taiwan to meet her mother's estranged parents and the bird follows. Once in Taiwan, Leigh received incenses that, once burned, whisk her away to different times in her family's history, where she witnesses her grandparent's backstories, gets to know an aunt whom she never knew existed, and watches her parents fall in love. A family friend serves as translator and tour guide, but who is this person really? Family secrets are slowly revealed and the healing begins for both Leigh and her father as she comes to terms with her mother's death, her place in it, and her relationship with Axel.

I have mixed feelings about this debut novel. On one hand I found it to be overly long and a very quiet and slow read, where not much happens-at least quickly. On the other hand, it is beautifully written and has a lot to say about parent-pleasing and pressures, the devastation of suicide, and the power of forgiveness. The mother turning into the red bird was a great touch and added a mystical element to what could have been even more of a slog. I almost quit many times, but I started to care about Leigh’s outcome and had to see what happens and if I was right about the true identity of the family friend (I was!) and if the bird was going to transform back to the mom, somehow bringing her back from the dead. I was glad I didn't give up. All of the plot lines became sewn up in a satisfying, if unrealistically too happy, way with some cool twists thrown in. By book's end the reader will second guess if there really was a bird at all or if it was all a figment of Leigh's delusions and grief, then something happens at the end to prove that there really was magical afoot. I appreciate that Leigh is super-artistic to the point of defining the world in shades of colors (I don't think she has synesthesia, she is just extremely sensitive to color). I also like that the author offers the reader more information about suicide at the end of the volume. This is the second leading cause of death in American teenagers and is a real epidemic in our youth. Pan shows the devastation and guilt felt by those left behind and never glamorizes the act. This story is beautifully told with big payoffs for patient teen readers who like their books sad--yet with ultimately a happy ending.