Interessssssting. I lovedddd Motherhood by the author. This is a confusing, ramble, philosophical read that felt really sincere but also not at times? Themes of death, climate grief, creationism, and family are explored in really abstract ways. Some of the insights around loss were pretty stunning but as a whole I'm not sure if this book was super successful for me. 3/5!

This novel is, at its heart, about the relationship between Mira and her father, and as it expands to include romantic love and grief, the making of art and the unmaking of the world, author Sheila Heti creates the equivalent of an impressionist painting, inviting the reader to meet her halfway in creating meaning. Some parts are straightforward (scenes involving school, work, relationships) and some parts are more surreal (living in a leaf with the dead?), but the writing is consistently crisp and confident and undeniably captures something true about the times we’re living in. Art is subjective and Pure Colour is art; readers’ reactions might vary.

There must be some symbolism and philosophical themes in this book, but I don’t think I got it. It all started with God creating this world as a first draft and taking a breather to think through. Mira, Annie and Mira’s father came into play during this breather. Mira after meeting Annie had all these feelings that she could not really define. Up to that point I was able to follow; but when it came to relationship between Mira and her father, I started losing my grip on the story.

It turned out when her father died, her father’s spirit went into Mira’s body and he started to live in her. I don’t if this was symbolizing love between parent and child or something but more sinister than that. After sharing a body, then both turned into leaves until Mira got bored out that. Should this be Mira getting over her father’s death or heal from PTSD or just move on? I really cannot seem to understand.

The last page makes things bit more meaningful for me and look at the whole story from a different lens, but I have to admit I had hard time staying in the story. Writing and story telling were beautiful, but content challenged me a little.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. Mira loves her father and she loves Annie, an impossibly cool orphan she met during college, studying to be an art critic. From these small acts, the book widens out to show that this world is just God’s latest draft and will soon be scrapped for the next, and vastly improved, version. This is a wild book of philosophy and theology, but grounded by the thoughts, and insecurities, of Mira, who doesn’t understand the emotions that Annie has opened her up to and even spends time having her soul conjoined with her father’s in a leaf in tree by a lake after he dies.