Astonishing Splashes of Colour

by Clare Morrall

Kitty Wellington the narrator of Clare Morrall's absorbing sure-footed first novel has been brought up in a large family by her painter father. Surrounded by older brothers she has no real recollection of either her mother who was killed in a car crash or her sister who ran away from home. The great strength of the novel is Kitty herself. Morrall has provided her with a compelling narrative voice - wry confiding perceptive. Echoes from JM Barrie's disturbing masterpiece are quietly sounded with particular emphasis on missing mothers and "lost boys".

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Mental Illness, British Literature, Literary Fiction, Mental Health, Novels

348 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

Man Booker Prize shortlisted Clare Morrall shot to fame in a true to life rags-to-riches story when her novel ‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ and her tiny, unknown publisher became front page news after the shortlisting. Later novels have featured on TV Book Club, Front Row and Woman’s Hour on Radio Four and Radio Three, along with the sale of film and foreign rights. She has been awarded an honorary Doctorate for Literature by Birmingham University and is a regular judge for the Rubery Book Award.

Based in Birmingham where she continues to teach music, she originally grew up in Devon. Her adult daughters are also novelists. Alex Morrall’s ‘Helen and the Grandbees’ is due for publication in 2020. Heather Morrall writes teenage novels. Clare spends her spare time gardening and on cryptic crosswords and sudoku.

*Portrait painted by award-winning artist Robert Neil, PPRBSA

Reviews

[the reading cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantasievoll erzählter Roman über „unhinged women“

[Windy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book. I've read some reviews where readers have said they were disappointed. I think this comes from the blurb giving the impression that this is a story about synaesthesia. However, this is only one small part of Kitty, the narrator of this story of a dysfunctional family. At heart this is a story of a woman, brought up in an all male household, no mother on the scene and who, after the loss of a child, suffers with depression. When family secrets are revealed, dropped on Kitty like bombhells, her struggle becomes harder and her behaviour out of control.

A story of twists and turns, some I saw coming, others as a shock. I found heart in my mouth many times worrying about Kitty and where life was taking her.

A compelling read and my book of the month.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange and fascinating novel. Kitty, who narrates the novel, is a woman in her thirties who feels lost in various ways - she knows that when she was a young child, her mother was killed in a car crash and her older sister ran away from home, but she cannot remember either of them. She had a baby of her own who died, and she is haunted by this. She feels lost in a sort of Never-Never Land (the novel's title is a quotation from Peter Pan) and reality and fantasy get merged in her mind, which can cause her behaviour to become quite dangerous.

She also has synaesthesia, although this is not explored as much as it could have been, and I probably wouldn't have identified it as synaesthesia if the back of the book didn't say so. Although it may be that my own understanding of colour is a bit synaesthetic, because it didn't seem unusual to me to identify places and people and moods with colours.

What I found fascinating is that while Kitty's behaviour is often very irresponsible and erratic, and the rational side of me was thinking 'This is terrible', still somehow I felt drawn into her world and could sympathise with her on a human level, despite her behaviour. I found her a fascinating character.

I also liked how Kitty's complete chaos and lack of boundaries contrasted with her husband's OCD-like need for order - and the fact they have two separate flats, next door to each other, but completely different, because the two personalities and living styles simply can't combine. I saw that as somehow related to the synaesthesia - Kitty's flat is chaotically full of colours, whereas James' flat is neatly white.

I enjoyed the novel a lot, and want to read more by this author.

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focuses on a motherless child/childless mother from a big but emotionally distant family. References to Peter Pan make a rather crass analogy.

She is also a synaesthete (though oddly that thread fizzles out as the plot becomes more interesting), and has very little social/self awareness of the consequences of her actions on others.

You never really understand any of the characters - and especially not why James loves her. Perhaps that is a deliberate parallel with how little any of the characters know and understand each other, but it makes an unsatisfying and superficial read.

Not a bad book, but certainly undeserving of its place on the Booker Prize shortlist.

[Julian Lees · Rating 3 out of 5]

ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR was a compelling but depressing novel.
Kitty comes across as quite unhinged for much of the story, so accompanying her through this journey is both frustrating and excruciating at the best of times.She has an odd relationship with her husband James. To be honest, she has an odd relationship with nearly everyone in this book, especially young Megan. Furthermore, the revelation re Dinah was not a revelation whatsoever - you could see it coming a mile away.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Splashy, yes. Astonishing? No.

I imagine a lot of people figured out early on in this book what the surprises would be. I'd like to think the plot was constructed as a stage for synaethesia, but even that seems hardly fleshed out.

Unfortunately my sympathy for the character, Kitty, didn't go very far, despite what are admittedly some pretty big troubles. Aside from her, the other characters seemed underdeveloped. They came with labels: the husband is "sanity in a can," the oldest brother "the successful author," another one "the slow brother with a heart of gold," etc.

The family blow-out scene halfway through read like farce, with the two main combatants throwing barbs at each other like "Typical" (of you), and "Surprise, surprise." It was like a theater piece with actors who can't act, who stand still and read their lines.

The wind-down was overly drawn out, and marred by overstated reconciliations. (Remember the end of The Wizard of Oz (movie), where everyone appears at Dorothy's bedside? That's it in a nutshell.) And I found the metaphor in the last lines almost embarrassing: "I look at the ceiling and see a tiny spider rushing along with an appearance of purpose. Does it know where it's going? I think. Or where it's come from?"

Two stars from me, one of which is for concept.

[Crosy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried. I really, really tried to finish this book, but I just couldn't. I always feel terrible for not finishing a book, but with this one, I also feel strangely relieved.

What made this book interesting to me was for one the title and then the concept: being raised as the youngest of a number of siblings, almost all brothers, never knowing her mother, Kitty tries to find out about the history of her family and especially her mother.

If the author had spent more time on the supporting characters instead of only the protagonist, this could have been an intriguing family-history-novel.

But here, I have almost suffered through pages and pages of Kitty's lost walks through the city, Kitty's conversations with one of her brothers who I still can't seperate because they are all similar card-board figures, Kitty's weird marriage to the guy who lives next door to her, Kitty not taking the medication for the depression caused by losing her baby... and in the end, not even a week had passed in the story.

It was hard for me to connect or even identify with Kitty and the more I read of the novel, the more she bothered me. And since there was no other character in the book for me to invest in, I just had to stop.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you read the synopsis of this book, it mentions synesthesia, which is when someone sees everything in colors; this is part of the opening scene of the book when the protagonist, Kitty, sees everything in yellow, but rarely occurs afterwards – it’s only a hook designed to get you to read it; a better description of her condition would be hyperphantasia, extremely vivid mental imagery. This is seen in the opening scene where Kitty is waiting for children with the parents and au-pairs outside of a school, pretending that she also has a child among the others exiting at the end of the school day. As the opening unfolds and we learn that there is no child, we also learn that Kitty has psychological problems as she wanders all over the city because she doesn’t want to go home, or is afraid to; she’s married but her husband, James, lives in a separate apartment, and her relationship with her family apparently isn’t what we’d think of as normal either but her behavior isn’t unexpected. We’re dropped into the middle of a family situation that, as readers, we don’t yet understand but would like to make sense of and that’s the real hook, trying to get a grip on all this.

What Kitty longs for as much as the child she doesn’t have is the mother she lost when she was three. Although she has some vague memories from that time, she has no definite picture in her mind, and her father and older brothers aren’t much help. Her father refuses to discuss either her mother or her older sister, Dinah, who disappeared before Kitty was born, and her brothers, much older than her, either give conflicting stories or claim not to remember much at all, even a physical description. Although family photos of Dinah and the brothers exist, there are no photos of Margaret, her mother, and this is also a mystery: how is it possible that no photos exist and how is it possible that none of the brothers can give a clear description of their mother? This is the source of many of Kitty’s problems, a loving family with secrets and which doesn’t communicate well. Kitty is left to invent not only her non-existent motherhood but her non-existent (for all practical purposes) mother and sister. This leads to two disastrous episodes, one at the beginning with her nieces and a final episode with a young girl, Megan, who Kitty meets at an appointment with her psychologist who’s trying to help her deal with all these empty spaces in her life. All the people who can help her with this – James, her father, her brothers – won’t or can’t participate, leaving Kitty to slip into her own form of madness, her hyperphantasia.

This was a worthy selection for the 2003 Booker Shortlist, in my opinion, because it really touched me. I grew up in family of secrets and know the damage these secrets can do and how they can affect you in later life. As the truth slowly comes out, I couldn’t help thinking that if Kitty had been told the facts, she wouldn’t have had to invent them. In the end, protecting her from them, or refusal to face up to the past, did her more harm than good. I can relate. This was a surprisingly good read for me.

[Philippa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review published in the New Zealand Herald, November 2003

Astonishing Splashes of Colour
Clare Morrall
(Tindal Street Press, $29.95)

Reviewed by Philippa Jamieson

Astonshing Splashes of Colour was shortlisted for this year's Man Booker prize, and is certainly a well-crafted first novel and a good read. The prosaic style belies its subtlety and depth, and the author captures the ephemeral in solid form, translating universal themes of loss and family relationships into a poignant story.
The novel begins with Kitty waiting at the school gates with all the other parents, and gradually it becomes obvious that she has no child. She's desperately missing her baby who died at birth three years ago, and still feeling the emptiness left when they took out her ruptured womb.
The title, borrowed from a description of J.M. Barrie's Neverland, fits with with the world of an intelligent but slightly unstable woman whose world is a surreal kaleidoscope of lost or absent children, impulsive trips, and spontaneous visits to her family members at odd times of the day and night. Kitty is a Peter Pan who has residency in adulthood but a perpetual passport to childhood. Her husband is lovingly drawn as a devoted but obsessive-compulsive tidy freak who lives in the next door flat.
She is also trying to uncover more about her mother who died when Kitty was only three, and her long-lost sister Dinah, hoping she can piece together these missing parts to make her life more whole again.
Midway through the story does a dramatic about-face. The family skeletons start rattling and then are starkly revealed, shattering Kitty's already shaky world, and leading her to even more bizarre and desperate behaviour.
Unfortunately what could have been an electrifying climax seemed contrived and left me unmoved. Instead what made an impact on me was the exploration of the arbitrary verges between maturity and naiveté, between sanity and madness.

[Venkataraghavan Srinivasan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing, as an act, tends itself towards solidity. Putting words down reflects a certain process of thought, of decisiveness, of clarity. There is a tangibility that is impossible to deny; at any point in time, one can hold up a sheaf of papers, all filled in.

As a novelist, as a storyteller, this quality of presence grows in strength. A storyteller is a guide in a dark cave, carrying the only source of light and choosing what to illuminate and what not to. The act of illumination can rouse feelings of excitement and power in the storyteller; it can create too much eagerness within to ensure that the reader has seen. But little attention is given to the capricious nature of the light, the frustration of the dancing flame that leaves more in shadow than in light.

In that sense, Clare Morrall has achieved something that I would love to as a novelist - a sort of slippery, shadowy story that moves forward, slips back, slides across, doubles back, restarts but not quite, and then blows everything out of the window to then just do it again. As storytelling craft, this sense of unreliability that extends beyond just a narrator and seeps into everything is a finely attuned skill. The quality of absence, not just loss, is sharpened to a point.

'Astonishing Splashes of Colour' is a devastating book, superbly written and crafted. So much in the book is unreliable - motives, memories, actions, behaviours, stories - that it left me scrambling to find my footing and questioning whether things are as they seem. At the same time, so much under the surface is reliable and rock-steady - love, loyalty, family. The two are beautifully, meticulously woven together into the messy mesh of life. Rarely has a Western story about a family left me feeling so breathless and so hollowed out as this one has.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024: Still good, but my tastes in books has evolved and this one would only get four stars this time. I like that it deals with issues of family, infertility, mental health, hyperphantasia, and others without naming them and writing the book to be about them, it just has them incorporated. The writing style is strong. Obviously lots of colour but they're woven into the narration and not forced upon it. I had totally forgotten the climax/conclusion, though there were other pieces I did remember. Worth the read, even a second time.

2007: It's so good! It's the kind of book in which I get fully engaged with the character that I miss her when the book is finished. I love the way the author makes the character lovable. I don't know really how to explain it. I never ever wanted to judge her, even when she made ridiculous (or clearly wrong) choices. I wanted to help the other characters understand the protaganist and not judge her. The novel swallows you into itself, so that you're part of it, not a spectator. And the story, or at least the main character, is fresh and original so that you want to keep reading.

It would make an excellent book club book because there's so much to discuss -- I could even use it in school, because there's no sex or swearing or anything, but it's 'clean' in a way that I didn't even notice it was until I actually thought about it, which is very welcome and rare.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the book because of title and I enjoyed the few moments here and there when Clare Morrall played up her book's connection to Peter Pan but for the most part Astonishing Splashes of Colour left me bored. Kitty for a variety of reasons is a thirty-something adult who refuses to grow-up. It's not that she's young at heart or playful, she doesn't want to face the harsh reality that life can sometimes throw at a person.

Of course, there must be reasons for Kitty's withdrawal from the real world because people don't just break, at least that's what Morrall is implying. And rather than come up with anything "astonishing" or "colorful" she goes with humdrum and hackneyed. Kitty's family must be hiding a dead dark secret from her and if that's not enough, she's also suffered a mysterious still birth. Of course she can now, for no apparent reason try again for another child. Instead she is forced to wallow in the life that might have been for her if things had worked out differently. Whatever.

I've ready many positive reviews of the book and it was short listed in 2003 for the Man Booker Prize but I just don't see what all the praise is for. Sure, the book does have some interesting passages and I did love the first chapter, but the story doesn't go anywhere except down a very crowded and cliche ridden path followed by so many other books.

[Jenny Mitcham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have had this on my bookshelf for 18 years I think! Finally made time to read it. More of a 3 start rating most of the way through, but it did pick up in the last quarter and I liked the ending so I decided to give it a 4.

[Colm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book I thought I’d hate. This is a book that I wanted to have an excuse to throw away and move on to something else (I have a lot to get through) but, despite all that, this was a book I couldn’t put down. This is a book that made me squirm with discomfort. This is a book that made me want to read through my fingers. I feel like this book is what other people felt when they read Problems and didn’t hate it.

Having a mentally ill narrator is such a fine line to tread. You don’t want to offend people but you don’t want to dress it up in finery. You don’t want to caricaturise but unless it’s your day to day existence how do you write it? Even if it is, how do you write it? Clare Morall writes a wonderful book with a unique voice from a highly unorthodox point of view and does it in a way that made me anxious and upset on behalf of the person which, to me, shows a very high calibre of writer.

The book, at times, is predictable but I think that works in its favour. We, the reader, can see the writing on the wall but Kitty can’t. Some readers might think this poor writing but I find it emphasises Kitty’s condition beautifully. If Kitty were a person who could see the writing on the wall. She wouldn’t be in the trouble she sometimes is. We don’t end up in her shoes because we can interpret and extrapolate from incomplete data sets. On the other hand, Kitty is spectacularly observant/intuitive at other times in a way a more settled character wouldn’t be open to. I find all of this a great strength of the book rather than a weakness.

I can see how this book wouldn’t be for everyone but I really think it’s worth a try.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely ADORED this book. The story of a young woman struggling to define her
identity among highly unusual circumstances. Beautifully written, a story
that draws you in completely, wonderfully crafted three-dimensional
characters, settings that live and breathe all on their own. Virtually
flawless.

A favourite passage (one of many): "Most couples I know blend and merge when
they marry, take each other's colours and become stronger....James and I
don't seem to have worked out how to do that permanently, so our colours
only combine for short periods of time, then easily divide back into two
halves which exist next door to each other."

[Stephanie (aka WW) · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars) I enjoyed this book, even though it was, as another GR reader said, “so depressing.” Kitty Wellington has lost a child, and a uterus, to miscarriage. Her loss, and subsequent inability to conceive, knocks her for a loop and leads her to take a closer look at her family, particularly her mother, who supposedly died when she was four. Mostly the story of someone going off the rails, this is also a romance of sorts and a mystery. The book was a Man Booker finalist in 2003. I liked it, but did not love it.

[SY · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feels more like a 4.5/5 ⭐️ review. I really liked this book!! It actually got me out of a reading funk I had this summer (don’t look at my currently reading).

The main characters story was enjoyable and kept me wondering what she was going to do next. I was able to imagine each scene perfectly and the chapters were well organized, each containing its own important part of the story.

I feel like it was the perfect book to read towards the end of this summer, wish me luck on the next one.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant in every single way.

[Georgie Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing; tragic but real. Was like reading someone's thoughts and dreams.

[Tracey Keir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very sad but well written.

[Yessica P · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit depressing. I have a lot of pity for the main character, Kitty. The first one-third of the book is a bit slow, it's only telling Kitty go about her day, in fact, I can't understand her main purpose until then.

I'm also really surprised and saddened that Martin has to die. I've grown quite fond of him.

[Colin Davison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kitty has suffered a miscarriage and cannot have children. She has lost a mother and her sister ran away from home when Kitty was a child. She has been brought up by a distant father – absorbed in his work as an artist and unable to free himself from his past – and among four older brothers who don’t have a lot to do with each other.
Add to these misfortunes a complete wuss of a husband, a man of little demonstrated affection and obsessive tidiness. He lives in an adjacent, minimally furnished flat that could be a physical manifestation of the emptiness she feels inside.
So when this grievously disturbed woman takes a baby from a maternity ward for a day and abducts a young, troublesome girl to the seaside, one feels if not sympathy then some sense of mitigation for what she has done.
My difficulty with the book is in its conclusion. Her selfish acts of recklessness have terrible consequences, in one person’s death and the disfigurement of another.
Yet what does it mean for the perpetrator? That she must see a counsellor. How awful for her. But never mind, Kitty and husband James will face up to a future without children, her family is pulling together for the first time and meanwhile she has inherited a nice little property.
It’s a pity that the author’s sympathy for her main character dips into such sentimentality. She is adept along the way in bringing to life the bite-by-bite preoccupation of this unhappy woman, as she follows children out of school or takes her nieces to a performance of Peter Pan without consent.
Neverland, the home of lost children, with its ‘astonishing splashes of colour’ is a leitmotif of the novel, as is synaesthesia – the association of colours with emotions. ‘I dream in colours, astonishing, shimmering, clashing colours’ but ‘I wake up longing for visual silence, looking for a small dak place where there is no light,’ Kitty says.
There’s a brilliant image of the condition that she describes during a period of emotional crisis: ‘We have to stop spinning occasionally – let the colours show – like a kaleidoscope or merry-go-round – the colours blur if you go too fast – it’s a spectrum. You know – white.’
I wasn’t entirely convinced by some of the incidents – James’ panic on boarding an aircraft, for example, an episode that in any case contributes nothing to the plot.
But Morrall can write with beauty and elegance about the family, for instance about those nieces who ‘won’t be separated. Two halves of a whole, two wings of the same butterfly.’ And of those brothers who live so isolated from each other, she muses: ‘Families are supposed to have an inner closeness a network of roots that go deep down into the soil and connect .. Has someone dug down there below the soil with secateurs and snipped them all apart?’
And as any woman, dreaming of a child she can never bear, must think, her mind dwells on the things her boy will never do – ‘read Winnie the Pooh, never play his music too loud.’
Kitty confesses that she really knows children only in the children’s books that she edits. When a neighbour repeatedly shows a photograph of her dead husband, she reflects, ‘There is something satisfying about a happy memory .. Somewhere you can retreat to, where .. nothing will change. A place of safety, where everything is certain.’
For Kitty, that place was Neverland. I just felt that for all her travails, she finds her own place of safety rather too easily.

[Esther Gutiérrez Tuset · Rating 1 out of 5]

Empecé este libro con muchas expectativas, porque tras leer la sinopsis me quedé con muchas ganas y empecé con muchas ganas. Pensaba que sería de una mujer superando la muerte de su hijo, luchando contra la depresión y hacerse más fuerte. Lo primero que me atrajo de él fue la portada, no sé porque pero eso del osito de peluche solo, junto al título del libro me llamó y pensé que sería un buen libro, incluso pensé que podría ser de terror o misterio. Como he dicho antes, cuando leí la sinopsis, se me hizo interesante porque parecía la historia de una mujer intentando luchar contra el dolor de perder a un hijo y plantarle cara a la vida. No había leído reseñas anteriormente porque nadie conocía este libro o al menos, me dio esa sensación. Los niños perdidos llegó a mis manos gracias a que una mujer de mi barrio con la que me llevo bien, se enteró de que me encantaba leer y me dejo unos seis libros, este se trata del tercero y os diré que no me da ninguna pena el devolvérselo.

Los niños perdidos empieza con Kitty, una mujer de unos treinta años que parece haber perdido a un hijo, que vive en un piso al lado del de su marido James y que lleva una buena relación con su padre y sus hermanos. Su madre murió cuando ella tenía unos tres años, no sabe nada de ella y parece que nadie de su familia quiere contarle nada de ella. Uno de sus hermanos tiene dos hijas, Emily y Rosie que adoran a su única tía mujer. Hay dos personas más al margen de toda la familia que son su madre y su hermana mayor, Dinah, que huyó de casa. Seguimos a Kitty en su vida, viendo lo que vive y como se enfrenta a todo eso.

Hablamos de la historia, yo me esperaba mucho de ella y me quedé muy desilusionada con ella. La historia no sigue en nada lo que dice la sinopsis, parece que sean dos historias diferentes. Muchas de las cosas de la sinopsis se hacen diferentes en la historia y yo no encuentro una buena concordancia. Yo me esperaba algo más y no me ha dado todo lo que yo esperaba de él.

La trama no me ha gustado para nada, no entendía nada de lo que se explicaba. Primero te empieza con Kitty delante de un colegio (esto no es spoiler es lo que veis en la primera pagina) pero no entendía nada de lo que veía, no explicaba lo que pasaba, volvía al pasado y al presente sin ton ni son, sin avisar y, a veces, me costaba saber en qué momento del tiempo estaba. Además el libro avanza demasiado rápido, no explica el porqué de las cosas o que la ha llevado a cometer uno u otro acto. Cambiaba de escenario con demasiada rapidez y no entendía que había pasado, siempre preguntaba, "¿pero qué ha pasado? ¿Cómo han llegado ahí?" No digo que se tenga que explicar todo punto por punto, pero algo más de información se agradecería. No me gustó nada porque los cambios eran demasiado rápidos y sin explicación.

Los personajes... bueno, hay mucho que hablar aquí y sobretodo de la personaje femenina principal. De los demás, no tengo mucho que decir, pero vamos allá.

Kitty es el personaje principal y no entendí nada de ella. ¡Lo prometo! Parece más una niña pequeña cabezota más que una adulta, sólo hacía que hacer cosas sin sentido, siempre estaba utilizando la muerte de su hijo de excusa para todo. No le importa que los demás quieran ayudarla, es como si se creyera que sólo lo hacen para fastidiarla cuando lo hacen por su bien, se tira casi todo el libro mintiendo a las personas que la quieren sólo porque no quiere admitir que se ha equivocado, no piensa en las consecuencias de sus actos y encima, después seguía en sus trece de que ella tenía la razón cuando le habían dado mil razones por las que no. Se metía demasiado en las vidas de los demás cuando eso no le importaba para nada, se creía con poder para decidir lo que debían o no hacer. Había ciertos momentos del libro donde pensaba "ah, mira, esto me gusta, venga Kitty demuéstrame que puedes caerme bien, que no eres todo lo que he pensado". Pero justo en el segundo de después, volvía a cagarla con alguno de sus actos y yo me reafirmaba en mi pensamiento.

James es el marido de Kitty con quien lleva casado cinco años. Podría ser el protagonista masculino de la serie, pero aparece en situaciones tan esporádicas que puedo decir que el único principal en el libro es Kitty. James es un hombre que me caía bien en ciertas ocasiones, pero me sacaba de quicio en otras. Un hombre demasiado pulcro, demasiado obsesionado con la limpieza y el orden. No tomaba la iniciativa ni siquiera para ir a ver su esposa cuando esta estaba en el piso de al lado, siempre como pidiéndole el permiso a ella... ¡le faltaba sangre a este chico! Por otra parte, es alguien que se nota que quiere a Kitty, aunque cuando empieza a trabajar en su ordenador... adiós James. Pero tiene los pies en la tierra, podría ser el ancla de Kitty a la tierra, si ella no se empeñase en que ella tiene la razón y los demás se equivocan. Pero hay algo que me exasperaba un pelín de él, es que se guardaba alguno de sus miedos para él mismo y no quería hablar del problema o de la perdida que pesa entre su esposa y él.

El padre de Kitty es un pintor siempre ofuscado en su trabajo, lo que se cuenta de él en la sinopsis no concuerda con lo que se ve de él en la historia, otra cosa que me desconcertó. Cuidó de sus hijos en la niñez pero lo veo muy apartado de todos en la adultez, como si habiendo cuidado de ellos ya hubiese sido suficiente. Es un personaje con el que tengo pocas quejas, pero tampoco se ha dejado conocer demasiado. Tampoco es que me haya gustado demasiado por sus acciones en algunos momentos del libro.

Los hermanos de Kitty, son cuatro y cada uno tiene un trabajo que les gusta y dos de ellos están casados y uno de ellos, tiene dos hijas. Aparecen de vez en cuando en la historia, pero lo que cuentan de ellos en la sinopsis tampoco me concuerda con lo que hacen en la historia. No me he podido sentir identificada con ninguno porque la autora no les daba una buena aparición cada vez que salían.

Jamás había leído algo de Clare en el pasado, pero la verdad... dudo que lo haga de nuevo, al menos en un tiempo. No me ha gustado nada de su estilo, no me gusta que el ritmo sea demasiado rápido, que no se explique algunos de esos cambios sin que sepas porque ha sido, los cambios del pasado y el presente sin ton ni son... vamos, que el estilo de escribir que ha tenido con Los niños perdidos no me ha gustado para nada. Sí, se me ha hecho muy pesado el leerlo y casi celebré haberlo acabado cuando llegué a su fin. No creo poder decir más sobre su estilo porque ya os he contado todo lo que podía.

En definitiva, el libro se me ha hecho muy pesado de leer, no podía cogerlo por ningún sitio y no entendía nada de lo que ocurría en todo momento. Me costaba mucho seguir leyendo porque se me hacía pesado y al tener que pensar en que tiempo estábamos, el pensar en que había pasado en aquel momento de cambio que no se nos cuenta. Las razones de por qué Kitty hacia todo lo que hacía, el porqué de algunas cosas de algunos personajes que no se explican y que yo me quedaba "¿me podéis explicar por qué es de esta manera? ¿Por qué hace esto?". Además, siento que el final ha querido arreglarlo todo y tampoco es que me haya gustado porque lo ha querido arreglar demasiado rápido y no, así no se hace, a no ser que se haya ido hilando poco a poco.

En esta reseña voy a empezar a poner que puntuación les pongo a mis lecturas, pero a este libro le voy a poner un 1 de 5 estrellas porque no me ha gustado nada de cómo ha ido. Ya os he dicho bastante mis razones y no las voy a repetir porque si no va a ser la enésima vez que lo haga y no puedo. Pero como ya he dicho, no creo que lea nada de la autora durante un tiempo.

[Athena Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of Kitty, a woman with a peculiar family history who has suffered a personal tragedy resulting in the loss of her unborn child - and the loss of her ability to have children. This experience has knocked Kitty a little off her rocker, and we follow her through a series of interactions that cause her to unravel further.


I really wanted to like this novel because of its title. As the first few pages indicate, "Astonishing splashes of colour" is a quote from Peter Pan, which evokes an image of an adult who failed to achieve maturity, and prefers to live in a land of childhood. In many ways, this is Kitty - so much of her identity is wrapped up in the fantasies she has created about the mother who was absent from her childhood, and about her older brothers, and even about her unique marriage partner. And of course, her mental images of these people cannot stand up to the truth as it is revealed to her throughout the story, and this created much of the driving force of the plot.


But ultimately, while I appreciated moments of this novel, it fell short for me. I can't say I actually enjoyed it. I think in order to appreciate the novel you have to like, or at least understand and sympathize with Kitty. But I found her frustrating, foreign, and unsympathetic for most of the story. Her choices are sometimes so poor that I could only cringe and watch the fallout from a distance - and that's not how I feel about the characters I engage with.

[Deborah Pickstone · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not warm to this. Not helped by first person present. As for the supposed synesthesia, the author is not synesthetic and doesn't 'get' it at all; chucking colour related adjectives around does not give anything like a sense of synesthesia. As for making Kitty hyper-aware of nuances of feeling, emotion, colour and then having her report being unable to picture her brothers as individuals when she was younger - they appeared in memory as a generic 'brother', you can't have it both ways; either someone is hyper-aware of colour and emotional nuance, in which case they will have clear recall - or they are not and therefore maybe won't. Kitty seemed close to psychotic, even after being supposedly sorted out.

All of the characters were dysfunctional at the least and some presented as quite loopy. The whole time the book was in my hands I had that sort of pinched feeling of distaste and felt unsettled - I finished it because it was a short book. The author did use some lovely turns of phrase from time to time but that's the only thing positive I can find to say.

I would be most unlikely to read anything else by this author.

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, just I didn’t like the end. It changed too fast from deeply and colorfully portrayed psychological world to high-speed action book. While Kitty sucked me like a black hole into her Peter Pan childish and confused perspective while trying to figure out why she was seeing everything in colours and discovering about her silent brothers and too distracted father, non existing mother and sister, and then slowly evolving into her own husband and child story – I thought, yes, I like this book a lot.

I mean, I can understand author perfectly, she needed something to conclude, and it was sane enough to understand Kitty why she reacted like she did, just I needed some sort of mellowness toward the end. Which happened, but too quickly, after all that analysis in the beginning.

Things don’t go that way, it was real situation, real pain, real depression and then, it transformed into surrealism. End with the touch of pink, I suppose - life goes on. Which it does, just not that fast...

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

An emotionally engaging, worrying, beautiful, tragic, wonderful and upsetting book. In the beginning, I kept thinking how amazing it is that the main character, Kitty, is functioning at all. What a tragic childhood, what a dysfunctional family, what a terrible thing she went through as an adult. And then it just goes from very bad to a whole lot worse. As a reader, you know it's all going terribly wrong, but it's still oddly mesmerising. Poor Kitty, she's been lied to all her life, she didn't know the truth about herself and so she could never quite find herself. It's all very sad and tragic, basically everything I don't normally like in a book, but the wonderful writing hooks you emotionally and you can see traces of yourself, and traces of people you have known and loved, in Kitty, and you feel for her, you so desperately feel for her, even though she keeps making the wrong decisions. And although I can't really explain why (as this somewhat rambling review proves), I really quite liked the book.

[Suzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this book about a week ago. When I began it, I loved it. It seemed to hold a lot of promise and mystery, and it did indeed hold my attention throughout. The main character is a little unbalanced, but not so much so that you can't relate to her and like her. The cause of the loss of balance is gradually revealed, but even more gradually revealed is the underlying cause: deception. I can't say more without having to declare this a spoiler. The book is very well written, but I must say that the end, though real, was a little bit of a let down. Too real, I guess. I am impressed by Morrall's ability to show both sides of a character, tricking you into not knowing how to feel about them. This is, after all, how real people are and what makes relationships, especially lasting ones, so difficult.

[Louisa Elston-Green · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found it really difficult to keep going with this book and in the end I admitted defeat and gave up. The book is about a woman who feels disconnected to her life and her family and is struggling with feelings that she doesn't really exist. Clare Morrall obviously writes well as she was able able to convey this strange existence to the reader which meant I felt totally disconnected from the main character and I didn't really care what happened to her, despite her facing some potentially interesting and poignant life challenges. I also did not connect with any of the other characters and I found their family feuds cringeworthy, disingenuous, unbelievable, and at times, downright weird.

I loved the concept of synthesisia and the way Morrall describes feelings and experiences in colours, and this is why I am giving the book one star. I wish this had been developed more.

[Penny · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a meandering, slow-paced account of a woman and all her emotions concerning her family, her lost baby and everything she experiences - right down to how coffee swirls in the cup, how light falls across a room - the writing is so busy being poetic that the story is put on hold and all sympathy with the main character Kitty, is by-passed.

I see it was short-listed for the Booker and perhaps many other people would enjoy it but it is excruciatingly slow and describes endless details that are simply incidental.

In places I felt the writing was so macro-focused as a means to show the disturbed and distracted state of mind of Kitty. This did work well and the plot itself does have interest and unexpected moments - if you can get through the endless descriptions!