A New Name for the Colour Blue

by Annette Marner

I still see her sometimes in my sleep. She is walking through
the blue and orange lights of the city or in the desert country of red ground, spinifex and oaks. Last night I dreamed she was climbing a green and blue mountain, the kind you see in the tropics, rich and heavy with steam and rain. She is still only a girl in my dreams, but that’s how I remember her. In every dream she is walking. In every dream I call out her name. Tania.

Ten years after the disappearance of her best friend, and the death of her mother, Cassandra Noble escapes her country childhood to pursue life as an artist in the city. On the threshold of a promising career as a painter, her creativity suddenly abandons her. Soon after, she finds herself with a lover who wishes to control her just as her father once did.

While her last painting just might hold the key to why she can no longer create, what will happen when she discovers the two tragic events of her childhood are linked in ways she could never have imagined?

A New Name for the Colour Blue is a story of the healing power of remembering, of love, and the breathtaking beauty of the natural world.

228 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2020

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trigger warning: this review is about a book that explores domestic violence and child abuse.
There are spoilers too.

I didn't intend to read this book. Back in February I had emailed the publicist to tell her so because "I am tired of reading about violence, whether it’s DV or child abuse, or sexual abuse. It’s not the quality of the writing that’s an issue for me, it’s the normalisation of violence as a staple of Australian publishing". I was very pleased when Jock Serong won the inaugural Staunch Award for a thriller without violence against women, and I am in sympathy with the aims of the award, see here.

However...

Late last night I stayed up late watching a ridiculous BBC series called Banished via QuikFlix. It's about the very early days of First Settlement and it stars David Wenham faking an upper-class English accent as Governor Arthur Phillip. The plot lines are absurd, but its saving grace is that it has a very attractive cast, all the eye candy having spectacularly good teeth under the circumstances. By the time I went to bed with the book, I had forgotten about what I had read six weeks ago in the press release about the author's journey for A New Name for the Colour Blue. A quick look at the back cover blurb didn't enlighten me.

Marner writes beautifully, and I was soon drawn into the story of the artist Cassandra Noble in Adelaide, and her delighted discovery of the man of her dreams, Stephen. I was intrigued by Cassandra's memory of a childhood friend who disappeared from her life. But my heart sank when I read the exchange on the drive home from a dinner party with friends:

I drive us back to the city. His fingers stroke my neck as we descend from the dark hills to the frieze of white lights below. Each light is a home. As if a home and family is not a rare and precious thing, but ordinary and abundant like she-oaks. Like galahs.
'You never told me you could paint like that.'
'Because I can't. Not anymore.'
His hand on my neck shape-shifts into a fist. He brushes my cheek with his knuckles.
'You should have told me, Cassandra,' he says. 'You made me look like a fool in front of my friends.'
A moth explodes as it hits the windscreen. I switch on my wipers. For a moment, I cannot see where I am going.
'I'm really sorry, Stephen.' (p.9)

I knew then where the story was going to go, and I put the book aside.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/04/09/a...
Please note that I have rated this book 4 stars even though I didn't like reading it because of the quality of the writing.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every now and then a book sneaks into my reading pile that absolutely and utterly defies this reader's ability to describe it, the affect it had, and the experience of reading it. A NEW NAME FOR THE COLOUR BLUE was simply amazing. Beautiful, moving, haunting, fragile and deceptive: actually deceptive doesn't cut it, sneaky is better, in a good, clever and enlightening way. Incredibly sneaky in the way it weaves a tale of domestic violence, of control and expectation, grief, abandonment, and the pain of growing up and away from family; into the slide into acceptance of the past and how to craft a future.

There is steel wrapped up in gentleness here, as Cassie Noble, works out who she is, and what she wants her life to become. A drawing she made of a childhood friend is her most treasured possession, her ability to connect with close female friends a way forward when things are at their darkest. A country girl who moved to Adelaide, there's a secret in Cassie's past that she doesn't quite understand, but the move home to nurse her dying father in his last days, is the trigger she uses to work it out.

Instead you end up with a complicated exploration of domestic violence and misogyny, indigenous rights, childhood memories, grief, animal cruelty and relationships. There is a lot of ground covered, but it's beautifully, precisely done, no wasted words, no dwelt on evil, always accentuating the search for understanding, meaning, acceptance and place.

It's taken such a long time to get something vaguely coherent written down about A NEW NAME FOR THE COLOUR BLUE, the reading of which had so many returns to passages that were simply breathtaking. I just don't have the skill to write about this book in terms that are meaningful enough, but it's been many many years since I've read and re-read sentences in this manner, more years since I've stared off into space thinking about a passage, and quite a while since I sat up nearly all night reading a book that tweaked something deep inside in the way that this book did.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/revi...

[Jenny Esots · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mystery surrounds the childhood of Cassie Noble which shadows her adult life choices.
Until the two merge to find a hard fought resolution. Annette Marner has crafted a stories within stories with many diverging themes. We begin in metropolitan Adelaide with many familiar sights and scenes to this reader. It is so refreshing to find a book that has a rich sense of place.

The reader is then taken North to the Flinders Ranges, a place of ancient mountain ranges and a forlorn sense of isolation. As the story of Cassie's journey to selfhood, love and a reconciliation comes to fruition the reader is captivated by family grudges, nostalgia, and cruelty told in the most lyrical prose. This book has had a long gestation and it is clear that every sentence has been carefully placed. If anything there are too many threads here. We read of indigenous rights, misogyny, racism, migration, cultural cringe, domestic violence, grief, animal suffering and cruelty, palliative care and same sex relationships, all these themes are threaded together as a gripping narrative.

The creative need to express oneself is what lies beneath the traumatic events playing out here. An artist free to soar needs to be at home in themselves. The lead character finds many ways to escape her past, but finding her way out of the past is a journey worth taking. The book title is as intriguing as the entire narrative and well worth investigating.

[Cathy]

I sat with this one for a while. It was beautifully written, and not overly disturbing to read, but I found myself anticipating violence and conflict. Early in the book there is a scene where the narrator’s boyfriend touches her face with knuckles and clenched fist, and it is immediately clear that this relationship is about to descend into abuse. That is not the heart, nor the focus of this story, but eventually an even more traumatic abuse is revealed at the centre of the secret underpinning the narrator’s past.

I found the Adelaide scenes strangely disconcerting as places I am intimately familiar with were described and for some strange reason initially I found this even more of a barrier of imagining myself in the world narrated. That shifted as I became more immersed in the characters and the plot. The descriptions of place were evocative, again the writing was beautiful.

The narrator towards the end attempts to compare her Irish family history to the treatment of Aboriginal people in South Australia, and I found this extremely uncomfortable, I suspect it was supposed to be. The narrator’s re-connection with the land she grew up on raises interesting questions for those of us who are beneficiaries of the colonial legacy we have inherited.

At its heart this is a story about love and connection. A sense of self, place and identity, and the people who are truly important to us.

[Rebecca Prince · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was easy to read yet hard to digest. It seemed to posess an interesting juxtaposition of simple yet extremely descriptive prose. The story developed quickly and drew me in straight away. But it was simultaneously highly disturbing and depressing at times. I loved the visceral descriptions of the Australian landscape and how it seemed to intertwine with the emotions of the main character. I think this book could be potentially triggering to anyone who has experienced a dv relationship. Other than that I did really enjoy reading what was essentially a dark Australian drama, which posessed strains of the gothic and murder mystery genres.

[Jennifer MacKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will haunt me for a very long time. Its enchanting poetic prose softens the many harsh realities that the novel gently unpacks: the creeping insidious nature of domestic violence; the race wars that we still refuse to name, the sadness of a family torn apart by death, how dangerous hidden memories write their story on and in our bodies.
The haunting ancient Southern Flinders Ranges provide a perfect background for the complex harshness and fragile beauty of life so skillfully interwoven in this novel.

[Bronwen Heathfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that takes you on a journey, a journey of self discovery and discovery of history both recent history and the history of colonisation. It is set in South Australia both Adelaide and the Flinders Ranges. It is a novel that transports and moves. The prose paints pictures. I found the first half difficult because of the subject matter and had to pause and come back to it. I am so glad I did. Highly recommended.

[Sue Gould · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, evocative of place - a moving exploration of love, grief, pain and of the power of the past.

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Heavy in content and language. Very poetic, set in Adelaide and the Flinders Ranges.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a beautiful book to look at and touch. Very well written overall but didn’t quite work for me.