Astonishing Splashes Of Colour

St Just Monday Morning Reading Group 23rd October 2023.

Astonishing Splashes of Colour. Clare Morrall.

There was a long discussion about this book, and reactions to it were varied and uncertain – some readers liked it, some found it unconvincing as a narrative, and others weren’t sure one way or the other, changing their opinions at different stages of reading it.

Kitty, we agreed, as well as synaesthesia, had post-natal depression, and possibly underlying problems as well, maybe some form of Aspergers syndrome. We discussed synaesthesia, what it is, how it reflects in the book (the general opinion was that the theme of ‘colour’ was not carried through very well), and how it compares with, for instance, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, whose narrator is on the autism spectrum. We talked about the idea that Kitty’s very odd upbringing resulted in her becoming a very odd person; how she had counselling but it didn’t seem to be helping much; and her relationship with her husband, who was surprisingly empathetic towards her despite having some issues himself, possibly OCD. At the end of the book, we thought, despite the traumatic events that happened, Kitty seemed to have gone through some process of adjustment and emerged better able to see things as they were. Did all this make for a long, searching account of an interesting character and the deep themes of childlessness, loss of a child, and different aspects of mental health, or not? We weren’t really sure.

Various points from the narrative were singled out: for instance, the scene in which Kitty’s mother returns to the family, in the middle of a funeral, and she and Kitty’s father start bickering with each other, was felt to be unconvincing or at least underpowered. There was a similar reaction to Kitty’s father’s casual announcement that Kitty’s real mother was her sister Dinah. Kitty’s abduction of Megan, the difficult teenager, was also thought to be too far-fetched, and merely a means of extending the story.

We talked about the section where Kitty babysits her young nieces and takes them to the theatre without telling anyone, and out of this arose a conversation about ‘the unreliable narrator’. Kitty tells us that she was banned from further contact with the children because of this excursion – but why did she have three tickets to Edinburgh in her pocket at the time? This was never explained. Neither, really, is what happened to the woman Kitty thought was her mother, i.e., Kitty’s father’s wife – did she leave because of her husband’s lovers, was she an alcoholic, or was there some other explanation for her absence? And if we are not being told the ‘truth’ about these matters, how much more of the narrative is open to question? For instance, the opening scenes, where Kitty is waiting outside a school for a child, Henry, who does not actually exist – are obviously a fantasy in their own right, though for very understandable reasons.

A story for its time (published 2003), one reader commented, when mental health, PTSD and miscarriage was finally being talked about more openly.

At the end of the discussion one reader mentioned that the Daily Mail’s review of the book, on its back cover, says it is ‘deceptively simple’. We disagreed with this and considered the book deceptively complicated.