All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

BOOK REVIEW

Every so often you are recommended a book and the cynic in you thinks – really, is it that good?

I did think that then berated myself after reading this book, because it is that good.

This is a missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller and an epic love story with a unique twist happening in each genre.

Late one summer, the town of Monta Clare is shattered by the abduction of local teenager Joseph ‘Patch’ Macauley.

Saint Brown is broken by her best friend’s disappearance; she is determined to find him but when she does, it will break her heart.

Patch lies in a pitch-black room all alone for days or maybe weeks until he feels a hand in his.

Her name is Grace and though they cannot see each other she takes him from the darkness and paints their world with her words.

In this hopeless place, they fall in love; but when he escapes there is no sign she ever even existed.

Patch charts an epic search across the country, Saint shadows his journey.

This book is literary fiction told over 600 pages and exploring friendship and love, unrequited and unrealised.

It’s not a fast-paced novel, although the beginning and end do have a sense of urgency and jeopardy.

It’s perfect reading for the holiday period; you need to be prepared to invest time to find an empathy for characters as varied as the landscape that the author paints such vivid pictures of through his narrative style.

There is no questioning the beauty of Chris Whitaker’s prose, of his ability to recreate the setting of his imagination through words alone.

This is a story of friendship that spans decades and a connection that endures even when fate conspires to place people on entirely different paths.

It is a story of love that manifests itself in various ways.

There is a deep vein of emotion flowing through the core of the book and you would have to be entirely hard of heart not to be moved by certain scenes, to not feel the keen sense of loss that informs the story and spurs on the characters at times.

There are moments of light in the darkness – personalities who will make you smile just when the book heads towards the heaviest periods of melancholy and utter desolation.

The highs and lows are worth it; Chris Whitaker is a magnificent storyteller.

He is the award-winning author of adult fiction Tall Oaks, All the Wicked Girls and We Begin at the End.

Julie Chessman