5/5 stars
What's it about? Maggie Nelson plumbs the depths of her obsession with blue, of color itself, and of grief over a lost love in a knockout work that defies genre. The result is reflection rendered, a meditation of a book that succeeds in creating an immersive mood, a mind state.
How’d I find it? I was late to work, hustling down the sidewalk after finding a hard-fought parking space, and passed a Little Free Library. Well, I didn’t pass it at all. I found this.
Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, William Carlos Williams, and Emmanuel Carrère's Lives Other Than My Own
What stood out? What a book. A slice of brilliance that had just the desired effect: a tickle in the brain that had me mulling over the words like a worry stone. The numbered paragraphs (verses?) are peppered with references to works I want to read immediately.
Which line made me feel something? “...the blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it. As one optics journal puts it, ‘The color of any planetary atmosphere viewed against the black of space and illuminated by a sunlike star will also be blue.’ In which case blue is something of an ecstatic accident produced by void and fire.”
