The Sound of Colors: A Journey of the Imagination
by Jimmy Liao
A pity that Hollywood has ruined so many story endings by making them all so damn uplifting. What's wrong with a little melancholy?
A year ago
I began to notice
that my sight was slipping away.
I sat home alone
and felt the darkness settle around me.
In Liao's bittersweet telling, a blind narrator ventures forth into the subway, searching for an unnamed something or someone. It quickly becomes clear that nothing can restore her eyesight, but acquiring vision is another, more heartfelt, matter.
Originally written in Chinese, the translation is set in New York, but it could well be any teeming, multi-ethnic city. At each subway station the girl alights onto an imagined landscape; dolphins frisk at one, clouds drift below another.
It's choc-a-bloc with allusions, first to childhood classics: the monster from Where the Wild Things Are or Hans Christian Anderson's the steadfast tin soldier, to name only two.
Liao then pays subtle homage to some of Modern Art's great colorists; watch for visual references to Matisse, Mondrian, Chagall and even Escher's monochromatic dreamscapes as she descends and ascends, again and again, tap-tapping out the new terrain where memory and wishfulness intersect.
The narrator's endearing for her refusal to let darkness define her world or narrow her possibilities, an important example for shy children especially. This story dares them to be brave and independent, to explore and feel and hear and really see.
Rating: *\*\*\*\
I was really taken aback by this book. It is beautiful, melancholic and poignant at the same time.
Posted by: brettdl | March 10, 2006 at 10:53 AM