Colorful: A Novel by Eto Mori
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Extraordinary joy and sadness can come out of the ordinary every day.”
What an unusual book. This short book is about a soul that gets a second chance and is put into the body of Makoto who has recently killed himself. This soul doesn’t remember what he did in his previous life to end up here but he has to live in Makoto’s life for a year to remember this own past so he can get to reincarnate into another body.
“Thinking about it, this didn’t just apply to Makoto. Maybe the world was actually filled to the brim with things it was simply too late for, things we couldn’t take back.”
As he slowly starts getting to know Makoto’s family and friends and life, he moves through a lot of feelings and while some parts of the book feel awkward to read I couldn’t tell if that was the translation or the original writing.
“The idea of the Kobayashi family I’d had in my head gradually began to change color. It wasn’t some simple change, like things that I thought were black were actually white. It was more like when I looked closely, things I thought were a single, uniform color were really made up of a bunch of different colors. That’s maybe the best way to describe it.”
I really liked how each character in the story was complex and not what they seem at first. How each of them have layers and layers like an onion. Like real people. And how Makoto has to reconsider everything each time he uncovers another layer.
“If in the world below, you do end up wanting to curl into yourself once more, please remember this time you spent on your do-over. Remember how it felt to move freely without trapping yourself in your own expectations. And remember the people who helped you up.”
Even though I was able to guess the ending, I enjoyed every page of this unusual book and really loved the author’s note at the end.
with gratitude to netgalley and Counterpoint Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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