The Taste of Blue Light

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Pub Date 07 Sep 2017 | Archive Date 12 Sep 2017

Description

'If Sylvia Plath wrote a novel for young adults, The Taste of Blue Light would be it' Louise O'Neill, author of Asking For It

What happened to me?
Why can't I remember?

Weeks after blacking out and waking up in hospital, Lux still has no memory of what happened.
She doesn't know why her days are consumed by pain and her nights by terrifying dreams; why her parents won't stop shouting and her friends stop talking when she walks into the room.

All she knows is that the Lux she once was is gone - and that if she can't uncover the truth, everything she loves will be taken away too.

'Devastating and brilliant' Stylist

'Truly unforgettable' Heat

'If Sylvia Plath wrote a novel for young adults, The Taste of Blue Light would be it' Louise O'Neill, author of Asking For It

What happened to me?
Why can't I remember?

Weeks after blacking out and...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781444936735
PRICE £12.99 (GBP)
PAGES 352

Average rating from 4 members


Featured Reviews

Everywhere around the world, all born under the same sky, alarms ring in hearts and people bleed.


The Taste of Blue Light is a story about a girl called Lux who attends a boarding school for artists. She loves to write and party too hard, and take recreational drugs. Lux lives the kind of life a lot of teenage artists dream of. She's been looking forward to her final year before she gets to go out into the real world but a little sad to leave everything she knows behind. She loves her life.. until she wakes up in the hospital with no recollection of what happened. Her memories are erased. What's left is a Lux who is empty and lost, who gets migraines, her sight and dreams are sometimes filled with red, and she has no idea why or how her life took such a huge turn.

My mother used to say my problem is that I can’t decide whether I’m whiskey or chamomile. It’s actually more like I don’t know whether I’m the lamb or the slaughter.
This story was so beautifully written, if a little pretentious. But I really did love the writing and reading Lux's story so much. It was sad, damn right heartbreaking but it was also filled with love and understanding as well as, in my opinion, a very good representation of PTSD.
Lux when we first meet her is fun loving, running a muck at a boarding school while her parents live in Singapore. She's lighting backyard fireworks, experiencing sex for the first time and feeling melancholy that she only has one more year left of all of this.
But then she wakes up and red is where her memories should be. She remembers that she went out one night but nothing else. She thinks she's partied too hard, taken too many drugs, but this nagging feeling keeps nipping at her mind that something happened, something awful and now all she feels is lost.
Lux sees all sorts of professionals to try and remember, her parents are back living with her before she starts school again but all they do is fight and Lux convinces them to let her go back to school because she'll find old Lux in the halls, she'll be fixed. Life is never that easy though.

She turns to pick up her bag and then turns back to me, holding out an origami bird.
"It's a swan,' she says. "Serene on the surface but paddling like hell under water. Like you."
"What?"
"Takes one to know one."
Her friends Mei and Olivia are so understanding and supportive of her, weathering the storm of nightmares and the ghost of their friend, and they're not the only ones.
She makes another friend in Georgia and her school therapist Dr Baystone is patient and not at all pushy of her recovery. Allowing Lux to rediscover what happened mostly on her own.
She also meets Cal, the new kid and they quickly fall for each other and start a relationship. Cal is kind and sensitive and without being the 'guy who saves the girl' he walks along side Lux in her recovery without trying to 'fix' her which is a breath of fresh air from the same old trope I have seen too many damn times in books that battle any kind of mental illness.

It hurts. The way only the truth can: completely.
When it's revealed what happened to Lux I was genuinely surprised, it wasn't something I was expecting. This book already was dealing with the sensitive subject of PTSD and then addiing more to that could have easily been too much for the the author to handle but Ruffles handled both sensitive subjects very well in my eyes.
After the reveal the recovery process isn't rushed. Lux doesn't find her memories and then goes straight back to normal Lux, the recovery is a long process before and after the memories come back.
Lux isn't fixed by the end either its very clear at the end of the book that she still has a long way to go and I really loved that it wasn't all tied up neatly in a bow at the end.
That's not what happens with trauma, even when you think you're better and healed, even when you think you've dealt with all the feelings and have locked it up in a cupboard to never have to deal with again. Trauma slips under the door, it hides in place you never knew it affected, it affects how you talk, behave, the way you are with others. It's always there, it changes you. No matter how hard you try to go back to the old you, you never really get there and I think in a lot of ways that's a good thing.

The writing is so beautiful and has such keen commentary on the world we have found ourselves in recently that I thought I would include a few of my favorites.
I'm not sad. That's too mall. A tiny word.
'And see if you can find something else to wear - you look like you're going to a funeral. Shit,
sorry, Lux."
"That's OK. I didn't have a funeral."
(view spoiler)
I know it will hurt when I miss him, but I choose not contaminating him.
Jack is a human grenade with a propensity for pulling out his own pin.

If you're looking for a book that tackles tough subjects well, or just want to read a beautifully written contemporary novel then I highly recommend giving this book a go!

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