Read 112 of 2022. Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

Title: Pure Colour
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 978-0374603946
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 224
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

I have found my second best book of the year (the first one being After Sappho),  and I say this with most confidence, happiness, joy, and sheer pleasure, that it is, Pure Colour by Sheila Heti.

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti is the kind of book that has no start, perhaps no middle, and maybe no apparent end as well, but oh God does it hurt when you are done reading the book. It shines brightly, it is therapeutic, it heals, makes you cry, speaks of the world, and makes you believe (and is the truth) that it is your story unfolding, with art and books at the center of it, and the way we live today.

Love is at the core of this book. Whether it is between Mira and Annie, or Mira and her father, or between people who haven’t met each other yet, or people who have been living with each other for decades, Heti speaks of love most delicately. She also brings to fore with her writing love of different kinds, of different textures that might hurt, of love that transcends time, and bodies, and might compel you to follow the one you love in the body of a leaf. Sheila is a stupendous, unafraid, and a writer that must be read at any cost.

Pure Colour is about the state of civilisation, it is about a woman joining her dead father on another plane of being and existence, it is about art and its critics, about what we hold close and what we are willing to let go of – perhaps it is also earnest at times, but it worked for me, because I was willing to overlook that aspect of the novel.

Sheila Heti’s writing reminds me of Murdoch – of her kind of philosophy that always took the worldwide look – the angle of being and existing together – when she speaks of nostalgia, and how it was before the Internet, you cannot put the book down. When she constructs sentences like “there were so many ways of being hated, and one could be hated by so many people”, you nod, because we have all witnessed that – this kind of writing makes you want to read this book cover to cover and gift it to a friend or a couple of friends and beg them to devour it.

Pure Colour is a mad book. It is a book of our times. It is a book that is crazy, original, empathetic, unafraid, bold, and above all is mindful of the fact that we are all humans, and maybe we all hurt the same.

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

Title: Motherhood
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN: 978-1627790772
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 Stars

It took me a while to get into “Motherhood” by Sheila Heti. I was under the impression that this one would also be an easy read, just like, “How Should A Person Be?”, however, I was mistaken. “Motherhood” also because of the content and obviously the writing style (which is mostly meta in my opinion), makes it a little of a tough read. If you are prepared to battle through the first couple of pages, you are in for a treat.

“Motherhood” as the title suggests is obviously about motherhood but beyond that,​ it questions what a woman loses or gains when she becomes a mother. At first, it comes across as a strange book even, given there is no plot really and when you read the narrator’s life and her point of view, then everything falls into place.

Her experiences, her friends’ experiences, people who have children and people who don’t; they all play a major role in building her as a person and yet at the core of it is the question of motherhood – related​ to body, philosophy, society, ​and womanhood.

More than anything, the book is about a woman’s body and her choices, which are hers alone. The writing​, as usual,​l is solid, drifting and changing forms (which I enjoyed a lot by the way) that propels the book to another level.

“Motherhood” celebrates every aspect of being a woman and I am so glad it does. At the heart of it, Heti is also writing about femininity and vocation, mortality and empowerment and the history of it all. She breaks the mould of what is being a mother and what isn’t and gives room for ideas and opinions that are different to breathe and prosper. Sheila Heti is truly one of a kind writer according to me.