Review: Sheila Heti offers a story strained by the surreal
ABC News
Sheila Heti explores the fate of the spirit in her meditative novel, “Pure Colour.”
“Pure Colour,” by Sheila Heti (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
A world determined by death and desire drives Sheila Heti’s “Pure Colour.” Interwoven by narrative, theory and criticism, Heti’s latest novel, caught in between the fate of the human spirit and the origin of the universe, drifts through adoration and creation.
Three different animal spirits are introduced in the beginning: the bird, the fish and the bear. People born of each possess a lens that prevents them from fully seeing eye to eye. Heti is interested in how these entities channel into the critical forces of judgement, and as God manifests as the three, the Earth is heating up for its second draft. This state of the universe subjugated in limbo contextualizes the novel’s dizzying scope, its story winnowed away by the world’s impending draft to come.
The close-third person narrator follows protagonist Mira, mostly from her mind’s eye as she ambles through her job at a lamp store, her studies in art criticism, the death of her father and her falling in love, each event culminating in an introspection on the inner self. The novel’s little action conveys the solipsism of modern friendship, the intangibility of romance, the pretensions of the mind and twisted filial love. Thought exercises take over plot.
