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The Color Of Night (2011)

by Madison Smartt Bell(Favorite Author)

3.11 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0307741885 (ISBN13: 9780307741882)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Vintage

review 1: Mae is a loner, dealing blackjack in Vegas and retreating to her trailer at night, where she roams the desert with a rifle. She was the victim of horrific abuse in her childhood and left home at 16, wandering out to the Haight during the Summer of Love and ending up enmeshed in a cult that committed an horrific act. She and her lover, Laurel, escaped the mass arrest by slipping out of the group home and hiding out in the desert. Now Mae is alone and she sees an image of Laurel during the aftermath of the Twin Towers crashing down on 9/11. It raises spectres in her mind and she begins to relive her past life. This book is a treatise on loneliness and living as an outsider for your entire life. Very interesting read.
review 2: In Bell's early acks, he states that... more his muses are "daemons," and that this story is proof. He writes that this is the "most vicious and appalling story ever to pass through my hand ... so inevitably some people will hate it." I did not hate it, despite being a reader who avoids graphic writing. (I will never read American Psycho.) When I saw that it was centered around a character named Mae who toted around a gun in the Southwestern desert, I had to read it. But had no idea what I was in for: incest, Manson cult life, murder, 9/11, all wrapped up like a daemonic serpent. For the most part, it works brilliantly. I'd give the prose a 5. The powerful voice and commanding, poetic prose keep you moving forward. I just took a few marks off for some plot turns that were not believable, to me. I think Bell embellished in areas he didn't need to. Still, this will probably go down as one of the best books I'll have read in 2011. It will for sure spark some interesting conversations. less

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