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Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine (view source)
Revision as of 12:39, 26 May 2015
, 12:39, 26 May 2015no edit summary
Oh, hooray! Finally! A new Jenny Valentine story! I was really looking forward to reading ''Fire Colour One'' and I wasn't disappointed. It's a sad story of an old man's final days. It's a lovely story of a daughter finding - and coming to love - the father she never knew. It's an inspirational story of the power of art to move us, enlighten us and empower us. And it's also a pretty strong indictment of materialism and the life-sucking emptiness of consumer culture. Really. It has all that!
Iris is a compelling central character. You feel for her - she's been deprived of a loving father and her mother is cold, selfish and calculating. Her stepfather is no better. I loved the way Valentine has Iris describe them - ''Looking good is the bedrock f of their moral code. Presentation is ethics to them''. Ouch! But Iris has issues of her own and they can't ''all'' be laid at her mother's door. At some point, she will have to come to terms with them, with the friend she left behind in LA, and with herself.
The book is really divided into those who love art and those who don't. Iris's mother and stepfather don't, obviously. But Iris does, and Ernest does, and Thurston does. And, one way or another, it's art that either saves or condemns each of them.