A must read, no question. It will break you but in the best way.
Like every Chris Whitaker book I have read, All the Colours of the Dark is a slow burn until it grabs you and then it really grabs you. It is one of those stories that burrows deep, breaking your heart and piecing it back together, only to do it all over again. More than once, I found myself tearing up .
Yes, the plot is far-fetched. Only in America could you believe something like this would actually happen. But that is beside the point. What makes this book extraordinary is the raw emotion, the humanity that Whitaker writes with so effortlessly.
The passages I highlighted are the heart of the story. Like when Patch, with his small clenched fists, throws the first punch because Saint is all he has got. And when she thinks, I am all you will need.
This is the core of this book. Love, loyalty and how people hold each other up even in the darkest times.
Then there is the aching wisdom woven throughout. People mistake money for class, anger for strength. How grief changes you, how memories live in people, not places.
And that gut punch of a line. Love is a visitor. Because, in Whitaker’s world, love is not always permanent, but it is always worth having.
And let us not forget the way he captures loss, not just of people, but of self. Saint wanted to ask what it was like to lose the thing that defined you. But perhaps she knew. That line lingers because so much of this book is about identity, about the way life chips away at us but sometimes also rebuilds us.
Patch’s art, his desperate attempt to paint someone back into existence, is one of the most devastating yet beautiful parts of the novel. The way he tries to bring Grace back with colour, even when he does not quite know how, is Whitaker at his finest, turning grief into something you can almost see.
A must read, no question. It will break you but in the best way.
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