My Review - 5 Stars

CW: suicide, attempted suicide, depression, grief, micro-aggressions

This book was a wonder! It's a luminous exploration of grief, taking place after Leigh's mother dies by suicide. 

“How did my parents think they could build a family around so many secrets? It’s like setting a house on top of a network of ditches and loose ground, and praying the foundation holds. No wonder we fell apart.”

Leigh both knows and doesn't know about her mother's depression. Kids, especially teens, notice so much more than we ever think they do. So, of course, she knows when her mom is having a bad day but her parents never address it with her and she's even sent away during the worst of it, literally shut out from her family. Not talking about depression and suicide only makes the stigma worse and it is no wonder Leigh does not know how to relate to anyone afterward. This #ownvoices review from Hannah at PostGradReads pointed out how the stigma is especially prevalent in the Asian community and the way the story explored this through Leigh, who is biracial with a Chinese mom and white dad. 

Instead, she comes to believe her mother is a bird. She believes the bird is giving her a message, that there's something her mother is trying to convey. There's an element of magical realism but at the same time, I wondered if it was a specific manifestation of her grief. Leigh has insomnia and barely sleeps in the weeks after her mother's death and sleep deprivation can do very fun things to our understanding of reality. I loved how this was explored through the bird and through her time in Taiwan visiting the maternal grandparents she never knew.

There's rich symbolism throughout the book, from the bird to the cicada—both the lone cicadas Leigh sees in Taiwan and her mom’s necklace. Leigh is an artist so she also attaches meaning and emotions to specific colors. Some people might feel this is a tad overdone but it worked for me. Although, I used to be hugely into art myself so it may be a specific way I related to Leigh. (Beyond sharing the same first name, that is. There have been so few instances of a main character with my name, the only other book I can recall is from my childhood and it was a boy named Leigh...the joys of a unisex name.)

I hated that Leigh’s parents never told her about what happened with her maternal grandparents or the truth about her mom’s depression. I also hated how her dad wouldn't support her art, how he conflated her mother's situation with his daughter when they were such different people. It's more evidence of why we need to talk about depression. But there was such beauty in the evolution of Leigh's relationship with her dad, such relief when they finally do start talking about the things that matter.

I really appreciated how the bulk of the story takes place in Taiwan and the way she feels out of place there is contrasted with the flashbacks to the times she felt out of place back home. The way her mom did not encourage her to learn Chinese is on full display as she's very limited in being able to communicate with her grandparents and this hampers her ability to learn the truth about what happened to sever their relationship with her mom, as well as figure out where the bird-mom is and what Leigh needs to learn from it.

Even though this grapples with heavy subjects, it's also interwoven with lighter moments of connection and belonging. The flashbacks also center around Leigh's best friend Axel and their burgeoning love story and I adored all of the uncertainty and unknowns of going from friends to something more. I loved every part of this reading experience and look forward to whatever Pan brings us next.

Synopsis

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.

Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.

Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.

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