Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Children’s, Teenage & Educational

THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER

Emily X.R. Pan

A stunning, heartbreaking debut novel about grief, love, and family, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Celeste Ng.

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to stay with her maternal grandparents who she has never met. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. As Leigh grieves, she uncovers family secrets, forges a new relationship with her grandparents, and tries to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life. Alternating between contemporary and magical elements, past and present, romance and despair, THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, friendship, and love. Emily X.R. Pan is editor-in-chief for Bodega magazine and teaches yoga. In the past, she worked for Penguin Random House and taught creative writing to undergraduate students and long-term hospital residents. She received her MFA in fiction from New York University, where she had the honor of being a Goldwater Writing Fellow and the editor-in-chief of Washington Square Review.

Available products
Book Published 2018-03-01 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Comments

An elegant, poignant journey that crosses an ocean of memory and great loss to face the ghosts of the past and find vivid love. An extraordinary debut from a fiercely talented writer.

This book mesmerized me from page one. With its lyrical writing and heartbreakingly real protagonist,THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTERprovides a poignant reminder of grief's power and the transcendence of love. Emily X.R. Pan utterly transported me to a world reminiscent of Isabel Allende. Haunting at every turn, this is a glorious debut.

Pan movingly explors grief and loss, as well as Leigh's meaningful search for connection to her secretive mother and her exploration of the many facets of her identity... Dynamic, brave Leigh emerges vividly in Pan's deft hand, and her enthralling journey through her grief glows with stunning warmth, strength, and resilience.

The dichotomous flow of this novel helps to peel off the many layers of the story - death and life, challenges and memories, past and future - all intertwined and continuing to build a sophisticated plot. This is the story of the facets of love and of life. It is beautifully told as it moves between time periods as well as between the rhythms of prose and poetry. This novel has a place in all libraries.

THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER has now debuted on the New York Times bestseller list!

Pan's writing takes readers on a journey filled with so much emotion, color, and such well-developed characters with a tourch of magic, readers will xome to the ending drained and fulfilled at the same time. An exploration of grief and what it means to accept a loved one's suicide, this book's lyrical and heart-rending prose invites readers to take flight into their own lives and examine their relationships... Pan's debut novel is not to be missed.

Magic and mourning, love and loss, secrets kept and secrets revealed all illuminate Emily X.R. Pan's inventive and heart-wrenching debut.

Emily X.R. Pan's brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heartwrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book.

This is a truly stellar debut, illuminating not only family's ongoing struggle with depression, but also the impact upon those left behind when faces with a friend or family member's suicide. The author's use of magical realism adds a poignant layer to the writing, providing readers with a haunting yet hopeful reading experience.

Pan's emotionaly charged debut is a compelling exploration of grief and the insidiousness of depression, Her narrator, an artist by nature, sees the world through a colorful, complicated lens, and the novel is steeped in its Taiwanese setting. The subtlety and ambiguity of the supernatural elements place this story in the real of magical realism, full of ghosts and complex feelings and sending an undeniable message about the power of hope and inner strength.

Pan offers an extraordinary journey that proves real, surreal and wholly magical.