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Pure Colour
A new novel about art, love, death, and time from the author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?
Here we are, just living in the first draft of creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.
In this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home for school. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters the strange and dizzying dimension that true loss opens up.
Pure Colour tells the story of a life, from beginning to end. It is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and a shape-shifting epic. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.
Here we are, just living in the first draft of creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.
In this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home for school. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters the strange and dizzying dimension that true loss opens up.
Pure Colour tells the story of a life, from beginning to end. It is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and a shape-shifting epic. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.
224 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2022
1491 people are currently reading
73511 people want to read
About the author
Sheila Heti
55 books2,177 followersSheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? Her upcoming novel, Pure Colour, will be published on February 15, 2022.
Her second children’s book, A Garden of Creatures, illustrated by Esme Shapiro, will be published in May 2022.
She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-three languages.
Motherhood was chosen by the book critics at the New York Times as one of the top books of 2018, and New York magazine chose it as the Best Book of the year. How Should a Person Be? was named one of the 12 “New Classics of the 21st century” by Vulture. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a best book of the year in The New Yorker, and was cited by Time as "one of the most talked-about books of the year.”
Women in Clothes, a collaboration with Leanne Shapton, Heidi Julavits, and 639 women from around the world, was a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of a children’s book titled We Need a Horse, with art by Clare Rojas.
Her play, All Our Happy Days are Stupid, had sold-out runs at The Kitchen in New York and Videofag in Toronto.
She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine, and has conducted many long-form print interviews with writers and artists, including Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Agnes Varda, Sophie Calle, Dave Hickey and John Currin. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Bookforum, n+1, Granta, The London Review of Books, and elsewhere.
She has spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the New Yorker Festival, the 92nd Street Y, the Hammer Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and at universities across North America, and festivals internationally. Her six-hour lecture on writing, delivered in the Spring of 2021, can be purchased through the Leslie Shipman agency.
She is the founder of the Trampoline Hall lecture series, and appeared in Margaux Williamson’s 2012 film Teenager Hamlet, and in Leanne Shapton’s book, Important Artifacts. She lives in Toronto.
Her second children’s book, A Garden of Creatures, illustrated by Esme Shapiro, will be published in May 2022.
She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-three languages.
Motherhood was chosen by the book critics at the New York Times as one of the top books of 2018, and New York magazine chose it as the Best Book of the year. How Should a Person Be? was named one of the 12 “New Classics of the 21st century” by Vulture. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a best book of the year in The New Yorker, and was cited by Time as "one of the most talked-about books of the year.”
Women in Clothes, a collaboration with Leanne Shapton, Heidi Julavits, and 639 women from around the world, was a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of a children’s book titled We Need a Horse, with art by Clare Rojas.
Her play, All Our Happy Days are Stupid, had sold-out runs at The Kitchen in New York and Videofag in Toronto.
She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine, and has conducted many long-form print interviews with writers and artists, including Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Agnes Varda, Sophie Calle, Dave Hickey and John Currin. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Bookforum, n+1, Granta, The London Review of Books, and elsewhere.
She has spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the New Yorker Festival, the 92nd Street Y, the Hammer Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and at universities across North America, and festivals internationally. Her six-hour lecture on writing, delivered in the Spring of 2021, can be purchased through the Leslie Shipman agency.
She is the founder of the Trampoline Hall lecture series, and appeared in Margaux Williamson’s 2012 film Teenager Hamlet, and in Leanne Shapton’s book, Important Artifacts. She lives in Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,567 reviews
April 1, 2022
these are just words. these are just words on a page.
let’s start with the book description itself “pure colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. it is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. sheila heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.” that doesn’t mean anything, those are just words!!!
i wanted to like this book so bad. it superficially feels philosophical and artistically written but some of the language is just so…
“she had felt his spirit [REDACTED] into her, like if was the entire universe coming into her body, then spreading all the way through her, the way [REDACTED] feels spreading inside, that warm and tangy feeling.”
*record scratch* stop the mf music. this is a sentence about her DEAD DAD!!! HER DEAD DAD’S SPIRIT ENTERING HER BODY!!!! every day y’all wake up and let freud and jung win!!! i won’t tolerate it!!
this entire book reads like a description of another book. everything feels like it’s being made up as it goes along. there’s too many big ideas in too minimalistic of a narrative.
it’s about death and grief and art, but it’s also this fantasy world where they are living in the “rough draft” of creation (?) and there’s supposed to be an upcoming “final draft” of the world and as the main character, in leaf form (oh yeah did i mention that her and her dead dad turn into a leaf?), realizes that she won’t be sad in the new world because there won’t be dads. like… according to who?? you literally just made that up, this whole thing is made up.
pop philosophy must be stopped this is so dumb! i’m sorry!
let’s start with the book description itself “pure colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. it is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. sheila heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.” that doesn’t mean anything, those are just words!!!
i wanted to like this book so bad. it superficially feels philosophical and artistically written but some of the language is just so…
“she had felt his spirit [REDACTED] into her, like if was the entire universe coming into her body, then spreading all the way through her, the way [REDACTED] feels spreading inside, that warm and tangy feeling.”
*record scratch* stop the mf music. this is a sentence about her DEAD DAD!!! HER DEAD DAD’S SPIRIT ENTERING HER BODY!!!! every day y’all wake up and let freud and jung win!!! i won’t tolerate it!!
this entire book reads like a description of another book. everything feels like it’s being made up as it goes along. there’s too many big ideas in too minimalistic of a narrative.
it’s about death and grief and art, but it’s also this fantasy world where they are living in the “rough draft” of creation (?) and there’s supposed to be an upcoming “final draft” of the world and as the main character, in leaf form (oh yeah did i mention that her and her dead dad turn into a leaf?), realizes that she won’t be sad in the new world because there won’t be dads. like… according to who?? you literally just made that up, this whole thing is made up.
pop philosophy must be stopped this is so dumb! i’m sorry!
August 3, 2022
Every sentence opened me. I felt as if this book were speaking to me privately and intimately, about private joys and private melancholy. I fell into a profound sense of being in a personal conversation with what I was reading on the page. I was reminded of what I should be paying attention to in my life--both in my big life--what it's all about--and in the small daily moments--what beauty there is to be found in them. The book worked on a pre-semantic level in me, where the meanings of the words were deeper than the words themselves. I can't remember reading a book that accomplished this with such ease, such joy. My deep thanks to Sheila Heti for trusting the person inside her who insisted that she write this book.
(Note on Apr 26 2022: I just bought my 5th copy of this book. I keep giving it away to friends. The only other book that I've given away this many times and bought again for myself is In the Distance by Hernan Diaz.)
(Note on Apr 26 2022: I just bought my 5th copy of this book. I keep giving it away to friends. The only other book that I've given away this many times and bought again for myself is In the Distance by Hernan Diaz.)
December 4, 2021
I have pestered many people into reading How Should A Person Be? and Motherhood, and I'm about to be so annoying about this one as well.
July 27, 2025
anything described as "a galaxy of a novel" is something i want to read.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
much like a galaxy, this contained some good stuff (like being beautifully written) and some bad stuff (like being weird).
the beautifully written bit is of the Sentences That Will Change Your Whole Perspective While Being Poetic And Lovely On A Page By Page Basis, and the weird bit is content that will make you question where the line is re: incest.
overall, it turns out it's a trade i'll take.
or maybe not, but regardless, the ending was so stunning and wonderful it balanced everything.
bottom line: weird forever!!!
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
much like a galaxy, this contained some good stuff (like being beautifully written) and some bad stuff (like being weird).
the beautifully written bit is of the Sentences That Will Change Your Whole Perspective While Being Poetic And Lovely On A Page By Page Basis, and the weird bit is content that will make you question where the line is re: incest.
overall, it turns out it's a trade i'll take.
or maybe not, but regardless, the ending was so stunning and wonderful it balanced everything.
bottom line: weird forever!!!
May 12, 2022
One day the universe got high and ejaculated and out came this book. I don’t think this is as inventive or profound as some people do. But if you like Sheila Heti, and are in a certain head space, then by all means light an incense candle, sample a tincture, and enjoy this book.
April 25, 2022
Until page 115, I was immersed in this deft, strange, grief-laden (both personal and global) end-times world, in what is apparently the first draft of the world. That the plot is tissue-thin, the characters too, that Annie is no more than a device, that the storyline is episodic and abrupt, was intriguing. The prose, often endearing, swept me along. The daddy issues, or perhaps more accurately termed enmeshment, that seem to permeate Mira's relationship with her father - his spirit "ejaculating" into her, well, it's a brave leap. When Mira goes into a leaf, in a tree both she and her father liked, into the leaf where her father is, and stays in that leaf for 40 or so pages, accompanied by declarations about and interrogations of mortality, death, grief, art, God, love (although the "love" in the book seems curiously desexualized, or perhaps post-sexual), the solar system, criticism (critics of art and literature as Gods of some sort), the transmigration of souls, various philosophies, etc., well the declarations and the interrogations, with their very deep earnestness, sometimes preciousness, that made me think of college students on dorm room beds opining on and on to establish their bona fides, who they are, what they stand for, began to weigh, the reading trance I'd been in burst, my interest flagged, then cratered. To be in a leaf for 40 pages in a book that is 216 pages long, is a long time to be in a leaf, though perhaps not a long time to be a leaf. My attempts to regain the reading trance failed; I never recaptured it, and instead what floated into my mind, and stayed there, was the Emperor's New Clothes, or whatever that fairy tale is, about how we believe something is there because we are told to believe something is there, even when there is nothing there at all. A quasi-mythical text with its own unrigorous system, original, to a degree, and very intent on performing that originality, defiantly abstract, very earnest, also warm, sweet, and occasionally funny.
April 6, 2022
i changed my mind this is a five star
just can't stop thinking about this
loved the profound simplicity
loved getting lost in a leaf
just can't stop thinking about this
loved the profound simplicity
loved getting lost in a leaf
June 15, 2022
Whoever wrote the blurb for this book deserves a raise. “A galaxy of a novel … celestially bright … a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling … absurdly funny”. Needless to say, my expectations were celestially high and I ended up disappointed. Pure Colour is “biblical” in the sense that it begins with the opening line of Genesis, and invokes God as a means of exploring the idea of a departed father figure. In this book Heti explores grief through a kind of mystical parable involving crazy transformations and overlappings of souls. The narration is consistently twee and deliberate, with subtly and intelligently skewed phrasings, metaphors and word-choices throughout. Though I admire Heti’s obvious skill as a writer, in my view her novels are all calculated exercises in faux-vulnerability. They are meant to be read as playful and nonchalant, but to me they seem a little too affected. She always seems to be mounting towards some glib aphorism or quip. I didn’t find the quirkiness of Pure Colour endearing, and I didn’t find it particularly innovative either. It’s not really any different from the sort of thing the Surrealists were doing a hundred years ago.
February 9, 2022
I think it's time to accept that whilst the broad overarching ideas of Sheila Heti's fiction appeal to me somewhat in the abstract, the resulting novels are just not my cup of tea.
For one thing I should have taken the descriptions of the "contemporary bible" element in the blurb more seriously: there are a lot of mentions of God, which is obviously fine if that's your kind of thing but unfortunately it's not mine. I've never been a particular fan of novels with themes that are religion-heavy (just a personal preference), and the whole "second go at creation" plot point and idea of the protagonist Mina having her dead father's soul inside her didn't really work for me -- neither did the descriptions that it had been "ejaculated into her". Oh, and the main character gets stuck inside the leaf of a tree at one point as well. (Yes, I'm aware that I should've read the blurb more carefully instead of getting sucked in by the pre-publication hype.)
This is quite an experimental and free flowing narrative, bouncing between ideas. That said, the chapters are short and snappy and it's accessible, making for a quick read. I don't regret my time reading it but I'd venture that it's not a book that'll be for everyone.
Thank you Netgalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
For one thing I should have taken the descriptions of the "contemporary bible" element in the blurb more seriously: there are a lot of mentions of God, which is obviously fine if that's your kind of thing but unfortunately it's not mine. I've never been a particular fan of novels with themes that are religion-heavy (just a personal preference), and the whole "second go at creation" plot point and idea of the protagonist Mina having her dead father's soul inside her didn't really work for me -- neither did the descriptions that it had been "ejaculated into her". Oh, and the main character gets stuck inside the leaf of a tree at one point as well. (Yes, I'm aware that I should've read the blurb more carefully instead of getting sucked in by the pre-publication hype.)
This is quite an experimental and free flowing narrative, bouncing between ideas. That said, the chapters are short and snappy and it's accessible, making for a quick read. I don't regret my time reading it but I'd venture that it's not a book that'll be for everyone.
Thank you Netgalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
March 18, 2022
The death of a parent. I haven’t experienced it yet. My friends have. I am terrified of it. When I sit there and think about it, it’s as if the chair or the couch or the mattress I’m sitting on is opening up under me, and the only thing that’s speeding toward the abyss in freefall is my heart. It feels like shit, and I have no way to express it. I never had a pet growing up, so I don’t have that experience of going through death. But in attempting to be ready for the inevitable, I have imagined it in my head. This image has always been centred on myself and how I would come out of the event, feelings, thoughts, regrets. Sheila Heti has basically just confirmed all of my feelings in one go. I feel understood, more at ease, and more nervous than ever all at the same time.
A friend lost his mom. If I can talk now, I will. I felt like a piece of shit throughout the whole ordeal. It was a slow, laborious process. I didn’t know what to do and where to be, where to place myself in relation to his pain, his world having fallen away. Did I have a place to occupy? Later, I rationalized it all away by thinking that what he had needed was normality, not for things to change – something that he could grasp throughout the rollercoaster ride of grief. He confirmed it. He said he needed it. I can’t accept this, even still. What would I want when it happens to me? I don’t know. “Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future ills; but present ills triumph over it.” Thanks La Rochefoucauld. You’re right. So I don’t know. Even when I started the process to become “a fixer”, as Heti puts it, I could not and still cannot accept the process and steps.
Because there is no way to rationalize and make whole the concept of death, we create fantasy. Heti’s character, Mira, knows this. She creates a deep dialogue with the idea of her father in order to process the passing of her father. The metaphysics of the universe created for Pure Colour are hard to understand logically, as they are all dependent on mood and temperament, intuition. That’s what is needed here. Not some stages of grief. There isn’t a magical door appearing at the end of a narrow and gloomy corridor with an “Acceptance!” plaque on it.
Heti is great at giving you a relevant story. Or maybe I think that, because the setting is Toronto and the neighbourhoods I prowl. But no. This is all relevant and real. James Wood points to Sheila Heti’s ideas about fiction: “I’m less interested in writing about fictional people, because it seems so tiresome to make up a fake person and put them through the paces of a fake story. I just – I can’t do it.” Well... Mira is certainly not Sheila, at least overtly. Maybe Mira is to Heti what Stephen was to James. Who knows. From what I understand, her previous books have broken away from tradition, which comes full circle here. She yearns for tradition, for a set of steps we can follow with faith, to help us do what we were put on this earth to do. At the same time, she shows an irreverence for any monotheistic or polytheistic religions and faith systems by mixing them up at will, saying “God” on one page and “the gods” the very next. We live in that time, don’t we? Everything is right, everything is relevant, you could always be intaking more into your system to be more right, and the only thing that’s the most most right, the rightest, is seeing everything and nothing all at once. In the midst of this all, we are unhappy, we are restive, we are grieving, we are yearning. We will blame it on anything and everything, just give me sweet release. Let me sit in a leaf and do nothing.
Why do I love this book so much? Quote time.
I wish I could use my words (now so inadequate) to explain just how proud I am that Sheila Heti and I have had almost identical paths of schooling (just the institutions, not the subjects) and have walked the same streets. I may have passed her on my street without having realized it. It gives me so much hope that someone is writing something like this. I am so happy to have been touched by this book. Look at me – bumbling fool! I can’t do anything to turn the slider up all the way – I am upping the intensity of adjectives by tossing a “so” in front of them. So happy, so proud, so hopeful. But it’s all true. This is the best of Toronto, and I say that with love. Hopefully one day I can shake her hand, sit down and have a coffee with her – maybe, just maybe, we can discuss life. And fixers. What are those guys for anyway?
A friend lost his mom. If I can talk now, I will. I felt like a piece of shit throughout the whole ordeal. It was a slow, laborious process. I didn’t know what to do and where to be, where to place myself in relation to his pain, his world having fallen away. Did I have a place to occupy? Later, I rationalized it all away by thinking that what he had needed was normality, not for things to change – something that he could grasp throughout the rollercoaster ride of grief. He confirmed it. He said he needed it. I can’t accept this, even still. What would I want when it happens to me? I don’t know. “Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future ills; but present ills triumph over it.” Thanks La Rochefoucauld. You’re right. So I don’t know. Even when I started the process to become “a fixer”, as Heti puts it, I could not and still cannot accept the process and steps.
Because there is no way to rationalize and make whole the concept of death, we create fantasy. Heti’s character, Mira, knows this. She creates a deep dialogue with the idea of her father in order to process the passing of her father. The metaphysics of the universe created for Pure Colour are hard to understand logically, as they are all dependent on mood and temperament, intuition. That’s what is needed here. Not some stages of grief. There isn’t a magical door appearing at the end of a narrow and gloomy corridor with an “Acceptance!” plaque on it.
Heti is great at giving you a relevant story. Or maybe I think that, because the setting is Toronto and the neighbourhoods I prowl. But no. This is all relevant and real. James Wood points to Sheila Heti’s ideas about fiction: “I’m less interested in writing about fictional people, because it seems so tiresome to make up a fake person and put them through the paces of a fake story. I just – I can’t do it.” Well... Mira is certainly not Sheila, at least overtly. Maybe Mira is to Heti what Stephen was to James. Who knows. From what I understand, her previous books have broken away from tradition, which comes full circle here. She yearns for tradition, for a set of steps we can follow with faith, to help us do what we were put on this earth to do. At the same time, she shows an irreverence for any monotheistic or polytheistic religions and faith systems by mixing them up at will, saying “God” on one page and “the gods” the very next. We live in that time, don’t we? Everything is right, everything is relevant, you could always be intaking more into your system to be more right, and the only thing that’s the most most right, the rightest, is seeing everything and nothing all at once. In the midst of this all, we are unhappy, we are restive, we are grieving, we are yearning. We will blame it on anything and everything, just give me sweet release. Let me sit in a leaf and do nothing.
Why do I love this book so much? Quote time.
Was there something wrong with her father’s spirit going into her after he died? More of what had oppressed her in her living? The life in him had always wanted to join her, and in his death, it finally did. For many years, his desire to be so close had been a bit of a problem, but in death it had become the most beautiful thing. In life, he had given her his entire life, but this had been a problem. In death, he had given her what remained of his life, and this was the most beautiful thing.
All the reading they had done in the hopes of transporting themselves, a transporting that finally happened with death, which delivered them the transporting they had hoped for by reading, while fearing it in the form of death – all while longing for it in reading!
To find the right distance from everything in life is the most important thing.
I wish I could use my words (now so inadequate) to explain just how proud I am that Sheila Heti and I have had almost identical paths of schooling (just the institutions, not the subjects) and have walked the same streets. I may have passed her on my street without having realized it. It gives me so much hope that someone is writing something like this. I am so happy to have been touched by this book. Look at me – bumbling fool! I can’t do anything to turn the slider up all the way – I am upping the intensity of adjectives by tossing a “so” in front of them. So happy, so proud, so hopeful. But it’s all true. This is the best of Toronto, and I say that with love. Hopefully one day I can shake her hand, sit down and have a coffee with her – maybe, just maybe, we can discuss life. And fixers. What are those guys for anyway?
March 26, 2022
It was a slog, but I finally made it out of Heti’s boring repetitive sky daddy issues leaf and I’m ready to slip into anything else.
did-not-finish
March 9, 2022dnf @ 47% | oh gosh. this was so pretentious and full of nonsense, i‘m so sorry. i‘m not bourgeois enough for shit like this. a perfect example of why i always used to look at literary fiction from a negative perspective; this felt so high-brow for the sake of being high-brow and i keep thinking of that one quote from sally rooney‘s 'normal people' that talked about literature as a class performance.
i contemplated pushing through because this book is such a quick read but…..no. there are certainly some stunning quotes here and there but overall i felt like the narrator constantly talked down on me, the reader, which i absolutely hated. i‘m not even quite sure how to properly put my feelings into words but the more i think about this book the more it makes me sick. the father‘s spirit being "ejaculated" in his daughter also gave me the ick. with so many sentences i kept asking myself "why?".
i think this was written for a specific audience which is just not me. very disappointing.
i contemplated pushing through because this book is such a quick read but…..no. there are certainly some stunning quotes here and there but overall i felt like the narrator constantly talked down on me, the reader, which i absolutely hated. i‘m not even quite sure how to properly put my feelings into words but the more i think about this book the more it makes me sick. the father‘s spirit being "ejaculated" in his daughter also gave me the ick. with so many sentences i kept asking myself "why?".
i think this was written for a specific audience which is just not me. very disappointing.
May 27, 2022
54th book of 2022.
Went in with high hopes which were quickly dashed. There's no real plot to speak of in this novel, which isn't usually a problem for me, plotless books are kind of my thing, but they have to be well-written or philosophical or bring something else instead. Heti tries really hard and it shows all the way through. At some points I was almost cringing at how hard she tries to make this into some sort of philosophical musing of a book. It's being called a "contemporary Bible". My girlfriend and I began it at the same time, but she quickly gave it up under 50 pages in (at one point Heti splits human kind into three types of people, those from metaphorical fish eggs, bird eggs and bear eggs. My girlfriend rightly exploded, Bears don't lay eggs! What kind of metaphor is this!). Which brings me onto one of my main problems with the book: the metaphors. They were consistently awful. The whole idea of the novel is that we are living in a kind of 'first draft' of the universe made by God/the gods. I don't have Twitter but this book reads like how I imagine Twitter philosophy reads.
It feels like Heti is trying very hard to be inspiring and deep but it just comes off as being pretentious and awkward. The book is painfully maudlin at times too which is my biggest book turn-off of them all. As soon as something goes into overly sentimental territory, I start hating it. Another metaphor begins, 'We lived suspended in a soup, a depression', and this same metaphor then ends, 'And apparently the water had plastic in it, even the safe water that came in plastic bottles.' I thought we were in soup? Every metaphor in the book either confused me or annoyed me. There are so many, at least one on every page. Many pages have singular paragraphs in the middle and nothing else. There's a lot of white space. There are some characters, there's a character dealing with the death of her father amidst all the Twitter philosophy, but it's hard to perceive that through everything else. Other chapters begin with things like, 'Well, you worry about an asteroid hitting the earth in the next million years. Who does? You do. No I don't.' The second-person was difficult to read. Another example of a horrible paragraph (all in italics in the book, too),
No, it doesn't. Another paragraph starts, 'Here we are, just living at the credits at the end of the movie. Everyone wants to see their name up on a screen.' By the half way point it felt like I was reading a strange self-help book. All the talking to the 'you', the being proud of being alive, being messy, being true to yourself, feeling immortal, a lot of the quotes felt like they could be spirally letters in the hallway of someone's home. The whole thing just felt vapid and pointless. It is essentially a bad Milan Kundera novel: and I'm not even a huge Milan Kundera fan. There's also some weird things between the girl and her dad, about his spirit being ejaculated into her when he dies and later on about her thinking he wanted to marry her, if only it was right. At one point she also becomes a leaf. Then later dresses up like a leaf. I'm not even sure, it probably meant something. In short, corny. But, having said, some people have loved it, even people whose opinions I trust, so don't take my word for it.
Went in with high hopes which were quickly dashed. There's no real plot to speak of in this novel, which isn't usually a problem for me, plotless books are kind of my thing, but they have to be well-written or philosophical or bring something else instead. Heti tries really hard and it shows all the way through. At some points I was almost cringing at how hard she tries to make this into some sort of philosophical musing of a book. It's being called a "contemporary Bible". My girlfriend and I began it at the same time, but she quickly gave it up under 50 pages in (at one point Heti splits human kind into three types of people, those from metaphorical fish eggs, bird eggs and bear eggs. My girlfriend rightly exploded, Bears don't lay eggs! What kind of metaphor is this!). Which brings me onto one of my main problems with the book: the metaphors. They were consistently awful. The whole idea of the novel is that we are living in a kind of 'first draft' of the universe made by God/the gods. I don't have Twitter but this book reads like how I imagine Twitter philosophy reads.
Are you sad to be living in the first draft—shoddily made, rushed, exuberant, malformed? No, you are proud to be strong enough to be living here now, one of God's expendable soldiers in the first draft of the world. There is some pride in having been created to make a better world to come. There is some pride in being the ones who were made to be thrown out.
It feels like Heti is trying very hard to be inspiring and deep but it just comes off as being pretentious and awkward. The book is painfully maudlin at times too which is my biggest book turn-off of them all. As soon as something goes into overly sentimental territory, I start hating it. Another metaphor begins, 'We lived suspended in a soup, a depression', and this same metaphor then ends, 'And apparently the water had plastic in it, even the safe water that came in plastic bottles.' I thought we were in soup? Every metaphor in the book either confused me or annoyed me. There are so many, at least one on every page. Many pages have singular paragraphs in the middle and nothing else. There's a lot of white space. There are some characters, there's a character dealing with the death of her father amidst all the Twitter philosophy, but it's hard to perceive that through everything else. Other chapters begin with things like, 'Well, you worry about an asteroid hitting the earth in the next million years. Who does? You do. No I don't.' The second-person was difficult to read. Another example of a horrible paragraph (all in italics in the book, too),
I would like to come back after my death and see—
What?
Whether my works were kept by humanity. Whether my art is being exhibited fifty, seventy-five, a hundred years from now.
So you want to return to earth to google yourself?
Yes. Immortality means googling yourself forever.
No, it doesn't. Another paragraph starts, 'Here we are, just living at the credits at the end of the movie. Everyone wants to see their name up on a screen.' By the half way point it felt like I was reading a strange self-help book. All the talking to the 'you', the being proud of being alive, being messy, being true to yourself, feeling immortal, a lot of the quotes felt like they could be spirally letters in the hallway of someone's home. The whole thing just felt vapid and pointless. It is essentially a bad Milan Kundera novel: and I'm not even a huge Milan Kundera fan. There's also some weird things between the girl and her dad, about his spirit being ejaculated into her when he dies and later on about her thinking he wanted to marry her, if only it was right. At one point she also becomes a leaf. Then later dresses up like a leaf. I'm not even sure, it probably meant something. In short, corny. But, having said, some people have loved it, even people whose opinions I trust, so don't take my word for it.
February 1, 2023
Shortlisted for the 2022 Folio Prize
I am really not sure what to say about this novel, which at times has moments of almost transcendent spiritual writing but which too often verges on being completely coo-coo.
Translated from the French (particularly if by an Eastern European born author exiled there) and this would I think be hailed by some as genius – but equally well published by a lesser known English author and I think it would be taken by most as parody.
To the extent the novel has a plot: a young woman Mira, in the years immediately pre social media, leaves home and her close relationship with her single parent father, works at a lamp store and studies at the International Satellite school of a (fictitious) American Academy for critics – a kind of cultural elite who “didn’t consider the fact that one day they would be walking around with phones, out of which people who had far more charisma then they did would let flow an endless stream of images and words” (which for me was rather a neat encapsulation of how Booktube for example has marginalised the role of the professional and typically compromised MSM book reviewer).
There she meets Alice – a slightly older woman and the two commence a relationship over time, before Alice returns home to her dying father.
There things which are already veer between the interesting (God as an artist and the current world as his first draft, one he has decided “contained too many flaws” and so is bringing climate change to redraft it) to the slightly odd (the world divided into birds focused on the abstract, fish focused on communal good and bears focused on close relationships is OK – but that the bears come from bear eggs not so much) - take a decided turn for the weird.
First of all Alice’s father’s spirit enters her – so far, so woo-woo but the author decides on a rather disturbing image of the Universe ejaculating his Spirit into Alice and then rather than moving on decides to revisit the image time and again adding extra disturbing metaphorical detail.
And then Alice enters a leaf, where she lives with her Father. Alice immediately “knew she had made a mistake” and can "do nothing but convert sunlight into food” but the author unfortunately does not and keeps her there for forty pages where the father and daughter have the type of profound but cliched “what’s it all about” discussions with him that University students have with each other.
I think a shell appears at a later point and speaks a message to Alice but by this point the book had rather stopped speaking to me.
I am really not sure what to say about this novel, which at times has moments of almost transcendent spiritual writing but which too often verges on being completely coo-coo.
Translated from the French (particularly if by an Eastern European born author exiled there) and this would I think be hailed by some as genius – but equally well published by a lesser known English author and I think it would be taken by most as parody.
To the extent the novel has a plot: a young woman Mira, in the years immediately pre social media, leaves home and her close relationship with her single parent father, works at a lamp store and studies at the International Satellite school of a (fictitious) American Academy for critics – a kind of cultural elite who “didn’t consider the fact that one day they would be walking around with phones, out of which people who had far more charisma then they did would let flow an endless stream of images and words” (which for me was rather a neat encapsulation of how Booktube for example has marginalised the role of the professional and typically compromised MSM book reviewer).
There she meets Alice – a slightly older woman and the two commence a relationship over time, before Alice returns home to her dying father.
There things which are already veer between the interesting (God as an artist and the current world as his first draft, one he has decided “contained too many flaws” and so is bringing climate change to redraft it) to the slightly odd (the world divided into birds focused on the abstract, fish focused on communal good and bears focused on close relationships is OK – but that the bears come from bear eggs not so much) - take a decided turn for the weird.
First of all Alice’s father’s spirit enters her – so far, so woo-woo but the author decides on a rather disturbing image of the Universe ejaculating his Spirit into Alice and then rather than moving on decides to revisit the image time and again adding extra disturbing metaphorical detail.
And then Alice enters a leaf, where she lives with her Father. Alice immediately “knew she had made a mistake” and can "do nothing but convert sunlight into food” but the author unfortunately does not and keeps her there for forty pages where the father and daughter have the type of profound but cliched “what’s it all about” discussions with him that University students have with each other.
I think a shell appears at a later point and speaks a message to Alice but by this point the book had rather stopped speaking to me.
February 18, 2022
oh my god......okay. i don't have words for how much i loved this or how special this was to me. it feels like the very essence of this book touched the very essence of me; it was beautiful, expansive, at once spiritual and grounded, and brimming to the top with love — for life, for the universe, for love itself. reading this felt like i was perched atop a leaf that was tumbling through the air, sun-dappled and breezy. i loved how strange, grief-stricken and ethereal it was.
like i said, it's difficult to put down in words how it made me feel or how much it meant to me, all i know is that it'll stay with me forever (the bird/fish/bear analogy and the concept of first and second drafts of this universe, among many other things). sheila heti you are EVERYTHING
like i said, it's difficult to put down in words how it made me feel or how much it meant to me, all i know is that it'll stay with me forever (the bird/fish/bear analogy and the concept of first and second drafts of this universe, among many other things). sheila heti you are EVERYTHING
October 5, 2021
One sunny afternoon, when Mira and her father were standing in the garden, he promised that one day he would buy her all sorts of mysterious, rare and marvellous things, including pure colour — not something that was coloured, but colour itself! Colour itself came in hard little circular disks, and was shiny like a polished stone or a polished jewel, but with its colour deep inside it. It showed its colour on the outside, for its outside was what it was all the way through. But unlike a gemstone, it didn’t emanate colour. Its colour sat there, turned inwards. Pure colour was introverted, like a shy little animal. Mira had never seen pure colour before, but she guessed there was probably lots that her father knew about, and could show her, and give her, besides these discs. But as Mira got older, it became harder to love him in the proper dimensions, or even to know what those were; any interest she developed in another person felt like it was taking something from him, since he had no one to love but Mira. It was generally a pleasure to be with him, but something always interfered. It was the heat of his fur, which followed her everywhere — clinging and itchy; but also comforting, home.
This passage that includes the title for Pure Colour is particularly apt as an introductory quote for this book; like, what does that even mean? This novel is, at its heart, about the relationship between Mira and her father, and as it expands to include romantic love and grief, the making of art and the unmaking of the world, author Sheila Heti creates the equivalent of an impressionist painting, inviting the reader to meet her halfway in creating meaning. Some parts are straightforward (scenes involving school, work, relationships) and some parts are more surreal (living in a leaf with the dead?), but the writing is consistently crisp and confident and undeniably captures something true about the times we’re living in. Art is subjective and Pure Colour is art; readers’ reactions might vary. Rounded up to four stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
After God created the heavens and the earth, he stood back to contemplate creation, like a painter standing back from the canvas. This is the moment we are living in — the moment of God standing back. Who knows how long it has been going on for? Since the beginning of time, no doubt. But how long is that? And for how much longer will it continue?
Heti establishes early that we’re living in the first draft of the world — the icecaps are melting, species are dying, we’re angry and envious and dropping dead in the streets of a new thing every day — only waiting for God to decide to try again; to make a better kind of human. And while there is sort of a storyline — centered on the (mostly) ordinary experiences of one ordinary woman — it’s the philosophical and surrealist passages that mark this as not your ordinary novel. Some nice bits:
• She had thought that when someone died, it would be like they went into a different room. She had not known that life itself transformed into a different room, and trapped you in it without them.
• The heart of the artist is a little bit hollow. The bones of the artist are a little bit hollow. The brain of the artist is a little bit hollow. But this allows them to fly.
�� A great artist rests back in the easy chair of his talent, and it’s like resting back in the warm hand of God. But Manet’s talent does not rest, and he is oblivious to his own stumbling. He is like a dog who walks with three legs, who believes himself no different from a dog who walks with four! He wants the public to do his job — they should simply feel enchanted. He asks the public to finish his painting, for he is lazy and incapable.
The last bit on Manet feels particularly relevant: Spoken by a Professor at the American School of American Critics (where the main character, Mira, went to study), the ironic notion that Manet should be called lazy because he required his viewers to bring their own experiences to a painting in order to complete it is what Heti is apparently asking of her readers, and arguably, what God is asking each of us to bring to His creation; that’s just the nature of art. I appreciate what I learned about the use of “pure colour” (without black) in the Impressionist movement as I googled Manet and I don’t want anyone to get too hung up on the metaphorical “God” that Heti frequently invokes; she notes that this draft of creation is as likely to be destroyed by an Oort cloud as by the hand of a disappointed deity. And I end by wondering if Heti has experienced the loss of a parent recently: the writing around Mira’s loss — including the surreal bits in the leaf — all had a touching ring of truth to it. And so, knowing we’re in the End Times, how do we choose to live?
Here we are, just living in the credits at the end of the movie. Everyone wants to see their name up on a screen. And whoever wants it is capable of putting it there. That is the work we are doing collectively now: just putting our names up on a screen. We have been given the technology for this one minor thing, here at the very end of the world, this one consolation, this booby-prize.
Everyone is seeking immortality — and even if we don’t all have the talent to create enduring works of art, we all have the opportunity to be “content creators”. What a time to be alive (she noted sardonically before hitting “publish” to her various platforms.) This was a pleasure to read and gave me much to think about.
March 20, 2022
ebook ….224 page book ..
….synced with audiobook….read by Sheila Heti
Heti’s ‘child-sounding’ voice worked perfectly reflecting the character of Mira…..(who ‘was’ a little childlike in relationship to her unbounded love for her father)….
…..3 hours and 49 minutes long
The ‘excerpts’ ….included are perhaps ‘hints’ of spoilers….
…but I’ve now listened to this book twice - read it once - and I’m convinced that every time it’s read or listened to, new insights - added thoughts - erased and a few original thoughts and new feelings will emerge quite distinctly.
It’s clear that “Pure Colour” is metaphorically abstract, yet it’s indisputably relatable.
The connections between consciousness and nature with the entire universe as opposed to simply thinking about our connections with society: family, friends, strangers, pandemics, politics, global warming, etc. …. (for me)…. took some of the charge off what the future holds in regards to the end of civilization.
“After God created the heavens and earth, he stood back to contemplate creation, like a painter standing back from the canvas”……
“People born from the bird egg are interested in beauty, order, harmony and meaning”.
“People born from a fish egg appear in flotation of jelly, and this jelly contains hundreds and thousands of eggs, where the most important thing is not any individual egg, but the condition of the many”.
“People born from the bear egg is like a child holding on to their very best doll. Bears do not have a pragmatic way of thinking, and which their favorites can be sacrificed for some higher end. Bears claim a few people to love and protect, and feel untrared by their choice; they are turned towards those they can smell and touch”.
“Perhaps God shouldn’t conceive of creation as an artwork, the next time around; then he will do a better job with the qualities of fairness and intimacy in our living. But is that even possible—for an artist to shape their impulse into a form which is not, in the end, an art form?”
“Only once in her life, lying in bed with her dying father, was she actually where she was, and not imagining she was somewhere she would rather have been. Then, when the spirit ever father went into her, it felt like her one true experience of life, since it was not something she had invented or pursued”.
“My basic premise is that in life, you live forever, because as soon as you die, you don’t realize you’re dead, so you’re kind of always alive, so the thing is, you shouldn’t worry about yourself. The only ones to worry about are the people you leave behind who might have needed you”.
“What is needed is to follow the family traditions. Getting together for meals. Faith that this matters, follow the traditions with love”.
“I would like to come back after my death and see—
“What?”
“Whether my works were kept by humanity. Whether my art is being exhibited fifty, seventy-five, a hundred years from now”.
“So you want to return to earth to google yourself?”
“Yes, immortality means googling yourself forever”.
“Googling oneself forever”….. it was one of the best ‘laugh’ moments for me….
I have never once in my life googled myself. Perhaps I should? Have others? Never once thought about it.
Okay….being a little more serious….
I enjoyed spending time with Sheila Heti’s “PURE COLOUR”…..
I DID HAVE A FEW FUN LAUGHS….
…..but I also took in the the depths of beauty of BEING HERE NOW….FAITH, TRADITIONS, SIMPLICITY, and HUMILITY.
…..also (spiritually) ….
I liked thinking about God and several Gods (God’s personal tribe family), entering people, watching other people from within the person they enter, trying to see what humans are like and how to make them better for the next draft of life.
I found it fascinating thinking about THE GODS watching the world from inside human beings in preparation for the next draft of creation.
The book cover is MAGNIFICENT…..but I didn’t ‘see’ magnificent until I read the book……which is cosmically-creatively MAGNIFICENT!
I ADDED MY OWN WINGS to it…..
Thanks to Sheila Heti’s imagination & inspiration — I enjoyed looking at transformation in the ways I did.
….The book cover is a perfect reminder— (fitting with Sheila Heti’s written words)….
“There is nothing either good or bad….it’s thinking that makes it so”.
I had a ‘trippy-good-time’….PLAYING ….a little with this SERIOUSLY THOUGHT-PROVIDING BOOK ….(themes of loss, death, a primal loss, grief, sadness, violence, fear, guilt, injustice, friendships, changes, love, etc)….
I found myself looking at my own plants and trees a little different now. (they know I know -that they know- what I know).
Mira and Annie’s stories adds sweet lightness in ‘Pure Colour’.
Mira loved Annie, and she love the world.
Mira doesn’t want to be a critic in the next world….she wants to just be. ……. as Mira knew now that she was conjoined by a leaf 🍃 on a tree 🌳 when her father died.
“Consciousness is a huge mystery, and no one understands how consciousness arises from a brain. No?
No, just the fact of a brain, and a leap from a brain, which keeps the heart pumping, to self-consciousness is not something people understand. But just because they don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it’s complicated. I’m not saying it’s complicated, I’m saying it’s a mystery”.
🦅 Birds
🐠 Fish
🐻 Bears
🎨 Artists
☮️ God
❤️ Love
“A leaf remains on the branch on which it’s been grown, it does not change the world around it”.
….synced with audiobook….read by Sheila Heti
Heti’s ‘child-sounding’ voice worked perfectly reflecting the character of Mira…..(who ‘was’ a little childlike in relationship to her unbounded love for her father)….
…..3 hours and 49 minutes long
The ‘excerpts’ ….included are perhaps ‘hints’ of spoilers….
…but I’ve now listened to this book twice - read it once - and I’m convinced that every time it’s read or listened to, new insights - added thoughts - erased and a few original thoughts and new feelings will emerge quite distinctly.
It’s clear that “Pure Colour” is metaphorically abstract, yet it’s indisputably relatable.
The connections between consciousness and nature with the entire universe as opposed to simply thinking about our connections with society: family, friends, strangers, pandemics, politics, global warming, etc. …. (for me)…. took some of the charge off what the future holds in regards to the end of civilization.
“After God created the heavens and earth, he stood back to contemplate creation, like a painter standing back from the canvas”……
“People born from the bird egg are interested in beauty, order, harmony and meaning”.
“People born from a fish egg appear in flotation of jelly, and this jelly contains hundreds and thousands of eggs, where the most important thing is not any individual egg, but the condition of the many”.
“People born from the bear egg is like a child holding on to their very best doll. Bears do not have a pragmatic way of thinking, and which their favorites can be sacrificed for some higher end. Bears claim a few people to love and protect, and feel untrared by their choice; they are turned towards those they can smell and touch”.
“Perhaps God shouldn’t conceive of creation as an artwork, the next time around; then he will do a better job with the qualities of fairness and intimacy in our living. But is that even possible—for an artist to shape their impulse into a form which is not, in the end, an art form?”
“Only once in her life, lying in bed with her dying father, was she actually where she was, and not imagining she was somewhere she would rather have been. Then, when the spirit ever father went into her, it felt like her one true experience of life, since it was not something she had invented or pursued”.
“My basic premise is that in life, you live forever, because as soon as you die, you don’t realize you’re dead, so you’re kind of always alive, so the thing is, you shouldn’t worry about yourself. The only ones to worry about are the people you leave behind who might have needed you”.
“What is needed is to follow the family traditions. Getting together for meals. Faith that this matters, follow the traditions with love”.
“I would like to come back after my death and see—
“What?”
“Whether my works were kept by humanity. Whether my art is being exhibited fifty, seventy-five, a hundred years from now”.
“So you want to return to earth to google yourself?”
“Yes, immortality means googling yourself forever”.
“Googling oneself forever”….. it was one of the best ‘laugh’ moments for me….
I have never once in my life googled myself. Perhaps I should? Have others? Never once thought about it.
Okay….being a little more serious….
I enjoyed spending time with Sheila Heti’s “PURE COLOUR”…..
I DID HAVE A FEW FUN LAUGHS….
…..but I also took in the the depths of beauty of BEING HERE NOW….FAITH, TRADITIONS, SIMPLICITY, and HUMILITY.
…..also (spiritually) ….
I liked thinking about God and several Gods (God’s personal tribe family), entering people, watching other people from within the person they enter, trying to see what humans are like and how to make them better for the next draft of life.
I found it fascinating thinking about THE GODS watching the world from inside human beings in preparation for the next draft of creation.
The book cover is MAGNIFICENT…..but I didn’t ‘see’ magnificent until I read the book……which is cosmically-creatively MAGNIFICENT!
I ADDED MY OWN WINGS to it…..
Thanks to Sheila Heti’s imagination & inspiration — I enjoyed looking at transformation in the ways I did.
….The book cover is a perfect reminder— (fitting with Sheila Heti’s written words)….
“There is nothing either good or bad….it’s thinking that makes it so”.
I had a ‘trippy-good-time’….PLAYING ….a little with this SERIOUSLY THOUGHT-PROVIDING BOOK ….(themes of loss, death, a primal loss, grief, sadness, violence, fear, guilt, injustice, friendships, changes, love, etc)….
I found myself looking at my own plants and trees a little different now. (they know I know -that they know- what I know).
Mira and Annie’s stories adds sweet lightness in ‘Pure Colour’.
Mira loved Annie, and she love the world.
Mira doesn’t want to be a critic in the next world….she wants to just be. ……. as Mira knew now that she was conjoined by a leaf 🍃 on a tree 🌳 when her father died.
“Consciousness is a huge mystery, and no one understands how consciousness arises from a brain. No?
No, just the fact of a brain, and a leap from a brain, which keeps the heart pumping, to self-consciousness is not something people understand. But just because they don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it’s complicated. I’m not saying it’s complicated, I’m saying it’s a mystery”.
🦅 Birds
🐠 Fish
🐻 Bears
🎨 Artists
☮️ God
❤️ Love
“A leaf remains on the branch on which it’s been grown, it does not change the world around it”.
February 6, 2022
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Literary Fiction
The synopsis of the book says that “Pure Color is a galaxy of a novel, explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. This is a truly exquisite story. It is the story of a girl named Mira, her relationship with her father, her lover Annie, and how she copes with losing her father. But that is just the tiny surface. It is much deeper than that.
The story is very weird in all the right ways. From the first chapter, I knew this was going to be a 5-star book for me. Something about the flow of the story keeps you engaged and focused. The author’s writing is so beautiful. Weirdness and beauty when are combined give such a magnificent result. The broad idea of the story is that what if the world that we are living in right now is just a draft of a better world that God is making? It questions many things like existence, life, death, loss of a love or relative in all the weirdest ways. It has to do a lot about spirituality.
The writing is philosophical, metaphorical, and biblical. It is a fast and easy to read book, but I found myself pausing and thinking a lot about what was happening. This is like when you have delicious cuisine and you want to take your time to chew and taste it thoroughly in your mouth before swallowing it. I felt that way exactly. I don’t think my review or any other review would give this book the justice it deserves. I have a strong feeling this will be shortlisted for the Booker prize this year. I’d love to read more of Sheila Heti’s books in the future.
Many thanks to the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader copy of this book.
Genre: Literary Fiction
The synopsis of the book says that “Pure Color is a galaxy of a novel, explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. This is a truly exquisite story. It is the story of a girl named Mira, her relationship with her father, her lover Annie, and how she copes with losing her father. But that is just the tiny surface. It is much deeper than that.
The story is very weird in all the right ways. From the first chapter, I knew this was going to be a 5-star book for me. Something about the flow of the story keeps you engaged and focused. The author’s writing is so beautiful. Weirdness and beauty when are combined give such a magnificent result. The broad idea of the story is that what if the world that we are living in right now is just a draft of a better world that God is making? It questions many things like existence, life, death, loss of a love or relative in all the weirdest ways. It has to do a lot about spirituality.
The writing is philosophical, metaphorical, and biblical. It is a fast and easy to read book, but I found myself pausing and thinking a lot about what was happening. This is like when you have delicious cuisine and you want to take your time to chew and taste it thoroughly in your mouth before swallowing it. I felt that way exactly. I don’t think my review or any other review would give this book the justice it deserves. I have a strong feeling this will be shortlisted for the Booker prize this year. I’d love to read more of Sheila Heti’s books in the future.
Many thanks to the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader copy of this book.
January 1, 2025
this isn’t a spiritual novel, it’s pseudo-profound “I just took a philosophy class for the first time” word vomit. insufferable.
February 20, 2022
Sheila Heti appreciates and exploits the flexibility of the novel. Her latest book is an unconventional, even peculiar one —by turns stimulating, frustrating, and affecting. There’s a rough, unfinished feel to it, and parts are quite opaque. Deceptively simple prose and a third-person telling sometimes make the novel read like a fable for children, but there are mythopoeic elements and long fantastical, surreal stretches as well, where the book moves beyond the fabulistic. I sometimes wondered if the author wasn’t a bit mad.
The novel’s focus is the death of the protagonist Mira’s father. Soon after his last breath is taken, she feels his spirit enter into her. Later, Mira inhabits a leaf and carries on a series of conversations with her dead parent, covering such topics as the afterlife (what it’s like to be dead, to have shed one’s body and personhood); the role of art; and the fate of an ever-warming planet, our current civilization, and humanity itself. I interpreted the protagonist’s experience as her entering a kind of vegetative psychological state in which the mind continues to work at a deep, subconscious level. A leaf functions metabolically, using light to make energy, but is incapable of autonomous action, forming a plan, or purposefully engaging with life. It’s an apt metaphor for early bereavement, and Heti rightly portrays it as a potentially dangerous state from which a person may need to be pulled by another.
Early in the novel we’re told that the world in which the characters find themselves is imperfect, God’s first draft, one that He’s almost finished writing. Flawed as it is, this world has a vitality and an intensity that may be edited out in subsequent versions. It is said to be populated by different types of people or “critics”, who hatch from one of three types of egg, reflecting different aspects of God. First, there are the flighty, fragile “birds”, interested in beauty, order, harmony, and meaning, who critique from above. Next are the “fish”, whose outlook from the middle of the action is communal and whose aim is to fix what ails society. Finally, we have the “bears”, who are in the thick of things, cradling loved ones in their arms. Family and tradition matter most to this type. Mira, the central character, is a bird. Annie, a detached, rather ethereal being whom Mira loves but cannot quite connect with, is a fish, and Mira’s father, whose entire life has been built around her (to the point that she’s feared being engulfed by him) is a bear. Mira is required to resolve what constitutes the right degree of distance between herself and others, and to come to terms with the death of her father.
Though it’s not explicitly stated, Toronto is the recognizable setting of the novel. The time frame is vague and shifting. We see Mira as both a young and a middle-aged woman, but ordinary markers of human time figure very little in the novel. There is also precious little plot, and Heti’s characters are thin, more spiritual concepts than bodies in a material world. This is a novel of ideas and emotions, and its themes are ones more frequently encountered in poetry than in fiction.
The language is loose, inexact, sometimes slippery. I’ll admit I wasn’t always sure what Heti was talking about. Her refusal to indent and punctuate the long stretches of “leafy” father-daughter dialogue didn’t help matters. Ultimately, however, I was impressed and moved by the book. I often complete novels and feel no particular urge to find out what other readers think about them. This one is an exception. Rich and strange, certainly open to interpretation, it’s a fictional work that begs to be discussed with others.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with a free digital copy.
Rating: 3.5 rounded up
The novel’s focus is the death of the protagonist Mira’s father. Soon after his last breath is taken, she feels his spirit enter into her. Later, Mira inhabits a leaf and carries on a series of conversations with her dead parent, covering such topics as the afterlife (what it’s like to be dead, to have shed one’s body and personhood); the role of art; and the fate of an ever-warming planet, our current civilization, and humanity itself. I interpreted the protagonist’s experience as her entering a kind of vegetative psychological state in which the mind continues to work at a deep, subconscious level. A leaf functions metabolically, using light to make energy, but is incapable of autonomous action, forming a plan, or purposefully engaging with life. It’s an apt metaphor for early bereavement, and Heti rightly portrays it as a potentially dangerous state from which a person may need to be pulled by another.
Early in the novel we’re told that the world in which the characters find themselves is imperfect, God’s first draft, one that He’s almost finished writing. Flawed as it is, this world has a vitality and an intensity that may be edited out in subsequent versions. It is said to be populated by different types of people or “critics”, who hatch from one of three types of egg, reflecting different aspects of God. First, there are the flighty, fragile “birds”, interested in beauty, order, harmony, and meaning, who critique from above. Next are the “fish”, whose outlook from the middle of the action is communal and whose aim is to fix what ails society. Finally, we have the “bears”, who are in the thick of things, cradling loved ones in their arms. Family and tradition matter most to this type. Mira, the central character, is a bird. Annie, a detached, rather ethereal being whom Mira loves but cannot quite connect with, is a fish, and Mira’s father, whose entire life has been built around her (to the point that she’s feared being engulfed by him) is a bear. Mira is required to resolve what constitutes the right degree of distance between herself and others, and to come to terms with the death of her father.
Though it’s not explicitly stated, Toronto is the recognizable setting of the novel. The time frame is vague and shifting. We see Mira as both a young and a middle-aged woman, but ordinary markers of human time figure very little in the novel. There is also precious little plot, and Heti’s characters are thin, more spiritual concepts than bodies in a material world. This is a novel of ideas and emotions, and its themes are ones more frequently encountered in poetry than in fiction.
The language is loose, inexact, sometimes slippery. I’ll admit I wasn’t always sure what Heti was talking about. Her refusal to indent and punctuate the long stretches of “leafy” father-daughter dialogue didn’t help matters. Ultimately, however, I was impressed and moved by the book. I often complete novels and feel no particular urge to find out what other readers think about them. This one is an exception. Rich and strange, certainly open to interpretation, it’s a fictional work that begs to be discussed with others.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with a free digital copy.
Rating: 3.5 rounded up
April 9, 2022
I hated this book and then it just hit me in a different register and then I got it. It’s a brilliant and poetic and profound book. You have to give it some time and withhold judgement for a while. But—it’s not for everyone. It’s really unstructured and totally metaphorical and I think it can slip into banality at times—but on the whole it’s brilliant
March 1, 2022
I think Sheila Heti is one of the more insufferable people writing today. I couldn't make it through Motherhood, but Pure Colour pulled me through simply because of its oddity. But what an awfully nonrigorous ending. Constructing a cosmology and writing minimalistically about vague existential truths does not a powerfully metaphysical novel make. Whether the book be about grief, art criticism, God, friendship, etc., it consistently failed to make an impact. Some pretty lines. Some creative structural choices. But this will float out of my mind, and I will not pick up another Heti.
March 13, 2022
DNF halfway. This is the third Sheila Heti novel I've left unfinished, so perhaps I could finally learn something from this experience...
February 22, 2022
Just no.
No.
If this is what passes for Fiction now, we are in the endgame.
No.
If this is what passes for Fiction now, we are in the endgame.
March 21, 2022
a book that makes your heart and mind feel full simultaneously
May 6, 2025
It is only when you get older that everyone makes you feel bad about being alone, or implies that spending time with other people is somehow better, because it proves you to be likeable.
But being unlikeable wasn't the reason she was alone. She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living.
Pure Colour ~~~ Shelia Heti
I knew I had to read Pure Colour after reading my friend Alan’s review. The fact that my father had passed away a year earlier added to my desire to read this.
Also ~~ I’ve been stuck in the land of big book classics the last couple of years. I needed to escape and read some shorter works ~~ no, some shorter, contemporary works.
I have so many conflicted feelings about Pure Colour. I’m sure this is one of the most profound novels I’ve ever read ~~ my friends in book club think Heti has pulled a huge joke on us all ~~ and I’ve fallen for it.
Regardless of how you feel about Pure Colour it is one of the most fascinating books you will ever read.
I choose this novel for my book club’s July read. Sadly, the response has been underwhelming. I think part of the issue is the members took this work too literally. A couple of members thought Mira really became a leaf. I understand this ~~ however, Pure Colour is an allegory, and not meant to be taken literally.
OK ~~ it’s time for a proper review.
So, Pure Color, is about a young woman who turns into a leaf ~~ or does she? It turns out being a leaf is pretty boring. So is photosynthesis it turns out.
Mira's transformation is disorienting ~~ for the reader if not for Mira herself. One moment she's mourning her father's passing, and the next she was inhabiting a leaf ~~ with her recently deceased father. Yes, this is definitely an allegory ...
Pure Colour is an experimental, complex, philosophical book that defies definition. Heti attempts to explore the relationship between fathers and daughters, life and death, transubstantiation, fixing things vs going with the flow, and love.
There are so many nuggets here, I had to reread them aloud to myself. Pure Colour is fresh and exciting, new and controversial, and it certainly won't be for everyone, but if you're an adventurous reader this is a terrific read.
But being unlikeable wasn't the reason she was alone. She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living.
Pure Colour ~~~ Shelia Heti
I knew I had to read Pure Colour after reading my friend Alan’s review. The fact that my father had passed away a year earlier added to my desire to read this.
Also ~~ I’ve been stuck in the land of big book classics the last couple of years. I needed to escape and read some shorter works ~~ no, some shorter, contemporary works.
I have so many conflicted feelings about Pure Colour. I’m sure this is one of the most profound novels I’ve ever read ~~ my friends in book club think Heti has pulled a huge joke on us all ~~ and I’ve fallen for it.
Regardless of how you feel about Pure Colour it is one of the most fascinating books you will ever read.
I choose this novel for my book club’s July read. Sadly, the response has been underwhelming. I think part of the issue is the members took this work too literally. A couple of members thought Mira really became a leaf. I understand this ~~ however, Pure Colour is an allegory, and not meant to be taken literally.
OK ~~ it’s time for a proper review.
So, Pure Color, is about a young woman who turns into a leaf ~~ or does she? It turns out being a leaf is pretty boring. So is photosynthesis it turns out.
Mira's transformation is disorienting ~~ for the reader if not for Mira herself. One moment she's mourning her father's passing, and the next she was inhabiting a leaf ~~ with her recently deceased father. Yes, this is definitely an allegory ...
Pure Colour is an experimental, complex, philosophical book that defies definition. Heti attempts to explore the relationship between fathers and daughters, life and death, transubstantiation, fixing things vs going with the flow, and love.
There are so many nuggets here, I had to reread them aloud to myself. Pure Colour is fresh and exciting, new and controversial, and it certainly won't be for everyone, but if you're an adventurous reader this is a terrific read.
May 13, 2022
This would be 1 star, but Sheila Heti has a way with turns of phrases that make things shift in my brain and click into place in a way they haven't before. Other than that, this book is almost entirely esoteric drivel, with a weird Oedipal dynamic as a bonus. The majority of this book is absolutely baffling. I am convinced that, were she not already a well-known and respected author, there is no way this book would have been published. :)
Some quotes I did like, though:
"Here in the first draft of existence, we crafted our own second drafts—stories and books and movies and plays—polishing our stones to show God and each other what we wanted the next draft to be, comforting ourselves with our visions."
"And she loved her meagre little existence, which was entirely her own."
"A writer could suspend their soul in language, making the souls of writers like droplets of oil, suspended in the sea of life.... To be in a world in which the writers she loved had once lived and written beautifully—that meant there was something real to find here."
"There is some pride in having been created to make a better world come. There is some pride in being the ones who were made to be thrown out."
Some quotes I did like, though:
"Here in the first draft of existence, we crafted our own second drafts—stories and books and movies and plays—polishing our stones to show God and each other what we wanted the next draft to be, comforting ourselves with our visions."
"And she loved her meagre little existence, which was entirely her own."
"A writer could suspend their soul in language, making the souls of writers like droplets of oil, suspended in the sea of life.... To be in a world in which the writers she loved had once lived and written beautifully—that meant there was something real to find here."
"There is some pride in having been created to make a better world come. There is some pride in being the ones who were made to be thrown out."
August 31, 2022
Utterly overcome by this. It gave me hope amidst modern midlife despair at the end of the world which I didn’t think was possible. Gorgeous, expansive, transcendent. A perfect and brilliant book that catapults my understanding of what a novel can be into a new and exciting dimension.
March 14, 2023
idk man i don't think sheila heti is for me. looks great on bookshelf tho
March 19, 2023
A deeply strange, mythical, philosophical book full of simply put complex ideas about the nature of existence and how to live a life and figure out what kind of person you are and die. It reminded me of the work of Gertude Stein and Jeanette Winterson, in its ability to be utterly relevant to the present moment but feel as timeless as if it were a fairy tale written centuries ago. In some ways this book is very intellectual, but it also made me feel deeply. There are many passages I copied down, some of which I feel like are contenders for tattoos or things I want to be said at my funeral.
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