Thanks again to GN for another book I might not have discovered by myself; and to Sarah J. Harris for an intriguingly different and interesting read . I’d definitely recommend this book.
“Bee Larkham’s murder was ice blue crystals with glittery edges and jagged, silver icicles.” From the very first sentence in this book we see events through the eyes of a severely autistic boy with both synaesthesia and prosopagnosia (face blindness). The boy, thirteen year old Jasper, isn't exactly an unreliable narrator but is most definitely one who is challenging to translate. Jasper cannot ‘see’ faces, he can only recognise people by the most basic clues - blonde hair, blue baseball hat, cherry-red trousers - and the colour of their voices. And it’s the colours that make this novel such a captivating read. Through Jasper’s own quirky and colourful retelling of the events and occurrences that have taken place the truth is slowly revealed, as what he knows is gradually unlocked for the reader – and the police - to decipher. It’s a great premise for a murder mystery.
Jasper paints what he experiences as abstract shapes, smooth or jagged, soft circles or hard rectangles, in the colours which represent what he sees, hears and the emotions he experiences. Jealousy is “a wishy-washy shade of onion”; the cries of his beloved parakeets are “deep cornflower blue with yellow hiccups”; and Rihanna’s music “exploding stars of gold and silver rippling and expanding into seas of flamingo and watermelon pink”... all of which made me wish I could experience what a synaesthete experiences. I’d love to see some illustrative examples of Jasper’s paintings, although I guess that would have pushed up the printing costs? And I’d love to know what my colours are!
I confess that, about half-way through the book, I did begin to find the author’s repeated descriptions of Jasper’s condition a tad monotonous, with no apparent progression of the story. But then it picks up pace and was simply ‘unputdownable’ for the last 130 pages as the plot finally unravelled and the truth was revealed.
I have no personal experience of synaesthesia nor of face blindness and learned a lot from reading this book. It also motivated me to learn more. Even before reading the acknowledgements and list of references, it was clear that the author had done her utmost to capture the uniqueness of Jasper’s voice authentically. All in all, her nuanced, sensitive portrayal of this “most extraordinary boy” is fascinating to read, opening our minds to voices so often unheard.
My questions for Sarah:
Journalist or author, which gives you most satisfaction?
What are the different challenges?
And what next?