The Astonishing Color of After

Overall, I found this story moving. If I'm being more honest, it kind of tore me apart.
That said, at times I found the structure repetitive, and some of the relationships felt shoehorned in at the last minute. For the most part I thought the characters were dynamic, and for the most part I felt the topics of mental illness and grief (and the especially difficult overlap of the two) were handled sensitively.

One of the greatest strengths of this story is its depiction of the stigma surrounding mental illness. Mental illness so deeply alters the experience of life, and yet those experiencing it are expected to pretend nothing is wrong. This shame extends outward, impacting both those living with mental illness and those living with those living with mental illness, like Leigh and her dad. Even when Leigh does talk more openly about her mother, all the while she is crushed under the pressure to keep explanations vague, to keep the ugliest bits hidden, not only from others but at times even herself.

Some books about mental illness seem to stall at the “this actually exists it is certainly real so stop trivializing it!” point. Not so with The Astonishing Color of After. It's more comprehensive. It speaks to not just the immense weight of the symptoms, but also the expectation that you pretend you are not even experiencing them. Even if they could end up killing you.

This might be odd, but I'd recommend this book to people who enjoyed A Monster Calls. Both books are about young people struggling to make sense of their mothers' illnesses. Both capture how you can simultaneously understand something so well and not at all. Both use imagery and metaphors to help work through some of the topics that are most challenging to talk about. Both straddle the line between what's “real” and what isn't, arguing that leaning into the abstract can help us make sense of the concrete.