Through It Came Bright Colors

by Trebor Healey

Neil Cullane is a closeted, conflicted 21 year old who lives in two worlds light years apart. At home, he's the dutiful son of Frank and Grace, and devoted brother to Peter who is battling cancer. But in the shadows of San Francisco underworld, Neil finds release with secret lover Vince, a beautiful junkie, philospher and thief.

Genres: LGBT, Gay Fiction, Fiction, M M Romance, Gay

232 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Awarded the 2013 Publishing Triangle Ferro-Grumley Fiction Award for A Horse Named Sorrow, Trebor Healey is also the recipient of the Lambda Literary Foundation's 2013 Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize and a Violet Quill Award for his first novel Through It Came Bright Colors. His other work includes a collection of poetry, Sweet Son of Pan, and three short story collections, A Perfect Scar & Other Stories, Eros & Dust and the just-released Falling, as well as the speculative fiction novel, Faun. As an editor, he has co-edited two anthologies: Queer & Catholic and Beyond Definition. He lives in Los Angeles and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.treborhealey.com.

Reviews

[Macartney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trebor Healy’s books remind me a lot of Fiona Apple’s songs: over-the-top, emotional gut punches; radiating from the heart above all else; full of explosive, not-for-public feelings (like going into an ugly cry on a rush hour subway train); sentimental, romantic, and earnest to a fault but always rooted in authenticity and pulsating with truth; spiritual, luscious and connected to the essence that is our raw humanity; basically: like how we were allowed to feel and act as children before adulthood and society shackled us into respectability and propriety. Similar in style and subject matter to his masterpiece A Horse Named Sorrow, Through It Came Bright Colors features another narrator sharing his tale on two parallel tracks. Neill, a 21 year old in San Francisco, tells us of his two loves: his younger brother, Peter, undergoing cancer treatment and his first love, Vince, a druggie vagabond who he meets at his brother’s cancer treatment center. Healy’s style is not for everyone. But for those who have ever been “a lonely child” with a “rich imagination” who felt the world and its beauty and its pain so deeply, so loudly, so brightly, Healy has created another love story for the ages.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Deeply disappointing in fact I can't remember a novel that has so completely failed to live up to my expectations, its awards, or its author's reputation and standing. I had only gone a few pages when words like stodgy, leaden, predictable, cliched and boring were banging on my consciousness and I was asking why persevere with such a very banal and badly written book.

Nothing and nobody in this dreary concoction has any life or realism - it is a cookie cutter, paint-by-numbers collection of one dimensional 'problems' that have been assembled to create a story line but without any attempt at consistency or relevance. First we have the 'cancer story' which is clearly supposed to be some sort of metaphor; there is a completely up tight closeted guy who meets an out, proud ready to seduce you gay guy who as soon as they do get together reverse roles and the closeted up tight kid turns into an a voracious slut and the out proud gay guy into a frigid tease queen. Why? No reason but here is a list of bullet points off a social or parole workers check sheet that you will find touched on in this novel:

- homeless since age 14 - check
- thrown out of home for being gay - check
- emotionally and physically abused by parents - check
- sexually abused by father - check
- riding railway boxcars across USA to get to San Francisco - check.

Seriously riding boxcars? Are we in the depression of the 1930's? No the novel is set in 1975! Did he never hear of hitch hiking? It is all just stupid and annoying because it is the worst sort of false and insincere writing. None of it feels real, none of it feels like something lived or experienced. Needless to say in the end our 'bad boy' becomes a smack addict - but there is not a shred of evidence the author has ever met a junkie let alone seen someone shoot up.

But the worse thing is the utter vacuity of the emotions described - it has all the depth of an after schools special. You want to read a novel about loving a junkie then read something by a real writer like Gary Indiana's 'Horse'. You want to understand the complexities of loving, losing or being a lost boy who no one understands read Denis Cooper's 'Guide' or 'Wrong'.

I cannot bear the idea of spreading this fatuous nonsense so I won't even donate my copy of the book to a charity shop. I am embarrassed that The Ferro-Grumley award was presented to this load of crap because I can't imagine either of the two authors it was named for not recognising this trite rubbish as a novel of importance. Certainly the novels cliched prose would have offended both Robert Ferro and Michael Grumley. If you want something to read go back and read the books of Ferro and Grumley. Read almost anything but this novel. I felt I had not only wasted time I could have devoted to the numerous books I want to read but that at my age I may end up not reading or finishing something I really worth reading because of the time wasted on this dross.

[Changeling72 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Trebor Healey is rapidly becoming one of my favourite gay writers. I don't like to go into massive reviews because a) I'm not a critic, and b) I don't want to include any spoilers. Healey's prose is beautiful, however, as he describes Neill's deeply loving relationship with his brother Peter, as Neill cares for Peter during the latter's ongoing cancer treatment, and Neill's burgeoning sexuality and relationship with Vince, the troubled cancer patient he meets in the waiting room at the cancer clinic. Healey does an amazing job in his descriptions of Neill's relationships with Peter, Vince and Neill's parents, how the cancer infects all their lives and their coping strategies, and the abuse suffered by Vince in childhood that continues to infect his life like the cancer that has been cut out of his body. The ending was appropriately ambiguous too. I care about these people, dammit, and want to know what happens to them all, but not knowing is perhaps the better outcome. Beautiful - that's the only adjective I can use to describe it.

[Blake Fraina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a love story. Nor do I think it was intended to be. It is, first and foremost, about the emotional growth of its narrator, Neill Cullane, a suburban youth confused about his sexuality and his role in his family. Although it might certainly, and rightfully, be viewed by the GLBT community as a "coming out" story, I think it is the latter theme, the exploration of family relationships, that ultimately distinguishes the book and makes it not only moving, but universal. Vince Malone, the charismatic, troubled street hood with whom Neill has his first sexual relationship, serves only as a vehicle through which Neill and the reader come to understand the intimate link between acceptance and love. Just as Rain Man is the story of Charlie Babbit, not his emotionally stunted brother Raymond, we know from the book's prophetic opening line that Through it Came Bright Colors is not a story of redemption for Vince. As with Rain Man, the focus is on the character who has the ability to change and grow, Neill, and what his relationship with Vince teaches him about himself.

While Neill is exploring his burgeoning sexuality, his family appears, on the surface, to be coming unravelled. His "golden boy" younger brother Peter is undergoing a series of increasingly more disfiguring cancer surgeries and his parents are having difficulty coping. It is in the juxtaposition of the scenes of Neill's family (in present day and flashback) as they tentatively, awkwardly, knit together, with flashbacks to the nightmarish erosion of Vince's homelife that the book exhibits its major strength. Ultimately, Neill realises that the true pleasure of love is in the giving of it, not the receiving of it. When someone accepts your love, they also accept you. Individual scenes between Neill and each member of his family (including his macho older brother Paul, who, like Vince, pushes him away) tenderly, sometimes painfully, illustrate this.

At times the book has a bit of a cobbled together feel with some clumsy transitions between episodes in the Tenderloin with Vince, scenes of Neill's family life and the numerous flashbacks/reminiscences (with one particularly jarring shift of POV in a fairly short flashback sequence between Vince and a female psychologist that should have been either re-worked or expunged entirely). These things might easily have been remedied with the expansion of some sections (to smooth transitions) or perhaps by using a third person limited (as opposed to first person) narrative, but on the whole the book reads smoothly and coheres quite well. And these shortcomings are far outweighed by the carefully chosen language, rich with metaphor, and the overall emotional impact of story. All in all, I highly recommend this book.

[Evaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not a light, entertaining, escapist read. That being said, it was a beautiful, lyrical (even in, and possibly especially in its darkest moments), at times eviscerating, at times glorious work.

"Love hurts, love heals - that's the crystalline message at the core of Trebor Healey's complex, accomplishing coming-of-age story about a cautiously queer suburban kid whose heart is unexpectedly squeezed hard by a young junkie's quicksilver mind and beautiful lean body. Healey's refreshingly original tale hums with the potency of poetry." That's what Richard Labonte, reviewer at Book Marks and Q Syndicate, had to say about this book and he said it better than I ever could have.

It was dark, it was gritty, it was cruel and it was filled with love and humour and moments of deep affection. It was difficult to read, especially having lost both my parents to cancer (the hero's brother's disease is a main part of the story), but it was familiar and real and touched me in spots I'd thought long-since healed.

I read this passage, where Neill, the protagonist muses about the taking care of his invalid brother, while I was in the cafeteria at work... "In the end, I think his wounds made it easier to love him as they taught me something I didn't know about love. My mother knew it; mothers do. Love was a much more physical thing thank I'd ever understood it to be. It lived where his fingers touched mine; it's what made the water bead up on his shoulders and roll off; it's what made his skin warm, glowing and soft. I'd always thought love was some feeling in the mind, but this was the physicality of love: the love of the body, so much simpler; so much more useful. It felt real, substantial, like proof--like what I needed. Cancer gave me that."... and I had to pause, wipe actual tears from my eyes and then read it over and over, marvelling at the obvious simplicity of something we tend so often to complicate.

So yes, this was a hard book to read, but so beautifully written and thought-provoking; and in the end ultimately very rewarding. The story of Neill; his lover, Vince and Neill's brother, Peter, is so much more than a love story, yet that's exactly what it is.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetic, but never flowery, this novel looks at young men trying to connect through the various deformations of character brought about by a twisted world. A sweet 'n' sour treat that left me glad, sad, and hungry for more.

[Suki Fleet]

This book is very affecting--(I read it six years ago and I still remember it quite clearly). I wanted to like it more than I did. Tagging it because I thought about it the other day and couldn't remember what the book was.

[Luka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to lie down and think about Vince

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written. So many feels. I gasped, I cried, I may have yelled an expletive or 3. I look forward to reading more like this.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth reading.

[Larry-bob Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trebor Healey's background as a poet shines through in his language in this book. The protagonist's bifurcated life between dealing with a health crisis in his family and the drama of a down-and-out boyfriend is reflected in the geographic split between the family's east bay suburbs and San Francisco's skid row.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trebor gets the San Francisco setting perfectly (the Tenderloin), the obsessive aspect of love that's doomed, and the subtle interpersonal relationships between a young gay man and his family. Painful, upsetting, sad and beautiful.

[Bill]

I enjoyed this very much. The prose was flowery and deep, not at all how I write. The characters were all very real and honest. And there were a few one-liners I am so going to steal. I think you might say this was a writer's book. I will.

[Jacob Staub · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful gay coming of age novel. Very honest, avoiding the usual cliches.