Pure Colour
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david &
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

Edition
ISBN 9780374603946

Reviews

Photo of Chris Mock
Chris Mock@thechrismock
3 stars
Jul 4, 2024

I think this book didn’t translate well to audiobook. It should be more pondered and read in your head in chunks. (Maybe because it’s better seen in well written one off lines, instead of a whole coherent picture)

Photo of bri (´。• ᵕ •。`) ♡
bri (´。• ᵕ •。`) ♡@oceanbritch
3 stars
Jun 18, 2024

Pure Colour takes the meaning of life concept and splits it into digestible forms. It then proceeds to pick those forms apart, roll them into a ball, and hurl them at me. Heiti's writing style is like reading a diary that is only stream of consciousness and blurs the time in between each scene. It's as if I was high when reading this. It makes you feel emotional, then confused, then you come to realize the bigger picture. It was an interesting short read and made me think which one am I in God's world: a fish, a bird, or a bear?

+4
Photo of katrina montgomery
katrina montgomery@katlillie
2 stars
Apr 11, 2024

I am an avowed Sheila Heti fan, but this book didn’t work for me. It felt so scattered. I think her style works better in fist person; the narrative voice here made everything impersonal and kind of hallow for me.

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rita@nomnomriir
1 star
Jan 7, 2024

this is a bible in the way that there’s for sure valuable lessons in it (or so i’m told) and there’s beautiful sentences (i’ve never read the bible) and maybe i’ll understand when i’m Older and I believe. it was also very boring and i kept on falling asleep while reading this book even though i’ve been sleeping 9 hours everyday! i took a 3 hour nap after reading the middle 20 pages i’ll for sure think of concepts from this book once in a while and feel smart but otherwise i gained nothing from this book! lots of sex metaphors that i didn’t understand and what was mira on when is this book set . why was she a leaf. is this book a bedtime story. yea! wouldn’t have finished this book if it wasn’t cut up into a paragraph a page and i skimmed over the punctuationless dialogue! yea idek. so much to think about because nothing happened! the spotify playlist i found for this book was so fun though i love indie however the book and the music in that playlist is kinda like the post folklore/punisher effect on indie music and post normal people effect on literary fiction ALSO in the middle of when the GOD part started sticking out to me i was preached to by a friend’s mom at a birthday party which was kinda painful yeah! too abstract maybe i’m not built for literary fiction :/. the first part where she was just doing things in toronto and kissing girls and talking to Matthew and college and whatever was kinda fun but maybe that’s cause i’m a teenager LOL #yas

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farah farooq@farahjww
1 star
Jan 7, 2024

I fell asleep halfway through and have no idea how it ended. frankly i don’t even want to know. this was just a pretentious piece of word vomit

Photo of Will Vunderink
Will Vunderink@willvunderink
1 star
Dec 18, 2023

Inane.

Photo of Jaden Nelson
Jaden Nelson@unojaden
4 stars
Nov 30, 2023

Sweet little book about life, death, and love. A really cool new way of looking at a lot of things in life like dying, connections to the people around you, God, existence, and our souls. Cool book, give it a chance, and don’t take it too literally.

Photo of arth
arth@arts
3 stars
Nov 24, 2023

The first half of the book sold me to what I deem as an interesting depiction of grief of losing a father and the desire to be oneself as a critic entity which find certain amusement and maybe some contemplation in God’s or human’s art. Sheila Heti is no doubt is a gifted writer and I love how the prose was written in such beautiful way that evoked some thinking from me. But, at the nearest end of the book, I lost my grip to make sense the overall enjoyment it’s trying to convey. I won’t say this one is boring, but you really need to be in certain head space to enjoy this book, and that’s not what happened to me. It’s still an interesting book to read but not as much as I expected to be. 3,5/5⭐️

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ame @sunflowertheft
4.5 stars
Oct 11, 2023

if you like herbal teas and patrick watson’s music you will also probably enjoy this deeply

+3
Photo of taylor miles hopkins
taylor miles hopkins@bibette
3.5 stars
Jul 13, 2023

Some lovely moments and thoughts, I like Heti’s perspective. Biggest critique is the big lack of narrative structure and overall character development.

I never mind not knowing exactly what’s happening in a story (I actually often really enjoy those books), but the writing style was so straightforward that having such an incredibly ambiguous narrative was contradictory and off-putting. I also finished barely knowing the protagonist—we learn more about the two people most important to her most of all, which makes her feel shallow and dull (and these people as well, since they’re being viewed from her perspective). The story had an unintentional wall around both plot and characters.

Some positives: the analogy of the three different types of people was an interesting and convincing foundation. A lot of highlights about the protagonist’s outlook on life in general, the first and second drafts, faith, fixers, etc. Favorite section was the leaf—those conversations and general writing were the most intriguing and conceptually comprehensible, in my opinion.

Glad I read it, but definitely did not live up to its potential. Great cover.

+5
Photo of Abby Willett
Abby Willett@abinator200
2.5 stars
Apr 25, 2023

This book was very interesting but used some interesting words and imagery that were jarring to me as a reader

Photo of Nicolás Niño
Nicolás Niño @niconv
5 stars
Jan 20, 2023

On God’s second draft, this book will be its bible.

Photo of Ruby Emmeline Fisher
Ruby Emmeline Fisher@rubyfisherreads
3 stars
Dec 27, 2022

i loved so many parts of this book. some of it was hard to follow, but my favourite segments were written beautifully and we’re really sweet.

+6
Photo of rie
rie@runinshae
3 stars
Dec 24, 2022

it's always frustrating to finish a book you did not particularly enjoy reading, but so many lines and quotes have gutted you, so now you're not sure how to rate it.


that's how i feel about this book because although the fragmented and at times nonsensical storytelling completely lost me, sheila heti has a way with words that made me say 'oh my god i have to sit down with what i just read and think it through'. this was profound, but also sometimes surface-level philosophy that is trying to be deep; confusing, but i also get what it's trying to say. my favorite scenes are probably those 'conversations' of mira and her father when they turned into a leaf because it reminded me so much of that rock scene from everything everywhere all at once. and can we talk about the ENDING? i swear i was so close to bawling my eyes out if only i wasn't confused for the most part of the story.


overall a beautifully written and highly reflective story about life, death, the universe, and the human condition, so if you're in for those deep conversation topics, then pure colour is for you.

Photo of 雪 xue
雪 xue@snow
5 stars
Jul 25, 2022

4.5/5 my toxic trait is that my fav authors are white women

Photo of Abbey
Abbey@naurbabes
2.5 stars
Jul 18, 2022

Super pretentious and obnoxious view of art/ who can make and critique art. Didn't help the orator had a really annoying voice

Photo of Sloan, Kara
Sloan, Kara@kayraw
4 stars
Jun 9, 2022

Only thing I didn't enjoy was the spiritual blurred lines, kinda freudian, father/daughter parts. Otherwise it felt a lot like a lazy river that takes its time, punctuated with small waterslides into the next pool.

Photo of Mia
Mia@paperbackgirl
4 stars
Mar 27, 2022

This is profound and more than a little offbeat told with very carefully constructed language.

+2
Photo of Gemma Copeland
Gemma Copeland@gemcopeland
3.5 stars
Jan 21, 2025
Photo of Sophie Maude
Sophie Maude@itsmesophiemaude
4 stars
Aug 24, 2024
Photo of Jovanna Briscoe
Jovanna Briscoe @jobrisk
5 stars
Aug 7, 2024
Photo of Kristina Bonitz
Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz
4.5 stars
Apr 13, 2024
+4
Photo of teresa
teresa@trsmbrn
2.5 stars
Mar 5, 2024
+2
Photo of refutabilitas
refutabilitas@d333cimal
5 stars
Jan 8, 2024

Highlights

Photo of Kristina Bonitz
Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

Both making life and making art are pouring spirit into form.

Page 184
Photo of Kristina Bonitz
Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

It is only those with icebox hearts and icebox hands who have the coldness of soul equal to the task of keeping art fresh for the centuries, preserved in the freezer of their hearts and minds. For art is not made for living bodies-it is made for the cold, eternal soul.

Page 23
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Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

Yet in the midst of all this, one could still see, on ones bookshelf. books that ere hundreds-even thousands!-of years old, that were relevant today. Yet none of the books which were twenty years old years old were the least bit relevant anymore. How a book has to make it through that awkward stage before it becomes something natural, an integral part of human civilization, as solid and inevitable as a tree.

Page 22
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Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

Some people experienced a delightful sort of rest in becoming very small, very inferior, and very irrelevant, in the face of such chaos and change.

Page 22
Photo of Kristina Bonitz
Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

Some people grew nervous that they would be left behind by the times; these people turned their backs on culture and took pleasure in the days passing the way they always had with the sun rising in the morning, and going down at night. We were curious about the world to come, but were relieved that its problems would not be our own.

Page 22
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Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

On such occasions, it is often the gods who are to blame. slip into a person like an amoeba, and from within one they watch another one-the one they have chosen to watch.

It doesn’t always happen mutually this way, but in their case it did - the gods just taking notes on humans, to make us better in the next draft of the world.

Page 41
Photo of Kristina Bonitz
Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

With a few people in one's life, too much happens emotionally-more than even makes sense to happen, given how little has actually occurred. Such people are deeply ignit- ing in a way that others are not. This igniting always happens in the first instant and it never goes away. No stupidities can destroy the igniting, so even if those two people never meet again, a connection always remains. …

It wasn’t that Mira had met her in some previous life. It was that she was meeting her in this one - and isn’t that rare! Why is it so hard to meet in this life?

Page 40
Photo of Kristina Bonitz
Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

At least God had given the sunrise-to those of us who lived on a cliff. At least he had given us a bit of love if not enough to see us through to the end of our lives. Here in the first draft of existence, we crafted our own second drafts - stories and books and movies and plays - polishing our stones to show God and each other what we wanted the next draft to be, comforting ourselves with our visions. On good days we acknowledged that God had done pretty well: he had given us life, and had filled in most of the blanks of existence, except for the blank in the heart.

Page 19
Photo of Kristina Bonitz
Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

On good days, we acknowledged that God had done pretty well: he had given us life, and had filled in most of the blanks of existence, except for the blank in the heart.

Page 20
Photo of Kristina Bonitz
Kristina Bonitz@kristinabonitz

She knows that the colour of that room is how they all felt, and that colour is not just a representation of the world, but of the feelings in a room, and the meaningfulness of a room in time.

Page 61
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rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

But being unlikeable wasn’t the reason she was alone. She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living.

Photo of rain/anagha
rain/anagha@bookseoksoon
  • Hate seemed to spring from the deepest core of our beings. Years later, all you had to do was peep through a peephole and there it was for anyone to see—a whole world of vitriol, entirely without end. It seemed that rage was what we were made of. And why not? Happiness was not meant to be ours. The love we imagined would never be ours. Work that could occupy our hearts and minds forever—this also was not meant to be ours. We would never make the money we hoped we would make. Nothing would be as we hoped it would be, here in the first draft of existence. People were finally beginning to catch on. Our rage made perfect sense.

Photo of rain/anagha
rain/anagha@bookseoksoon
  • . Some people experienced a delightful sort of rest in becoming very small, very inferior, and very irrelevant, in the face of such chaos and change.

Photo of rain/anagha
rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

But she didn’t think of herself as a person back then. She didn’t think of herself as someone who another person could see, evaluate, and finally judge.

Photo of rain/anagha
rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

Your friends were simply who was around. It didn’t occur to anyone that it could be another way. If you liked your friends, that was okay. If you didn’t like your friends, that was okay, too.

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rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

And she loved her meagre little existence, which was entirely her own.

Photo of rain/anagha
rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

What of the strength of our connections with certain people, and the weakness of our connections with certain other ones?

Photo of rain/anagha
rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

As the past cooled, it changed states. It had once been a solid, then it became a gas. Or it had been a gas first, then it became a liquid, and she was left holding the muck of it in her hands.

Photo of rain/anagha
rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

that sometimes a person is meant to move forward in the world with the one they love at a distance, and that the distance is there to make it more beautiful. To find the right distance from everything in life is the most important thing. To stand at the right distance, like God standing back from the canvas—for you can’t see anything if you’re too up close, and you can’t see anything if you’re too far back.

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rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

Were we the lucky ones, to have been chosen to live in this terrible time—to have been chosen to live in this heartbreaking time—as any moment in human civilization will break your heart, but none more so than the end?

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rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

You know the gods consider you dangerous if you are tired all the time.

Photo of rain/anagha
rain/anagha@bookseoksoon

People should care for other people because they are familiar—because they’re also humans—not because they’re family.

Photo of Jessie Kronke
Jessie Kronke@adovecooing

She had given herself no time to determine if the spirit of her father is still inside her, but-Oh there! She can feel it! Rising in her chest! It was not gone, but sleeping, dormant, waiting to be called! It does not know its way around her yet. It does not know where in her body it wants to be. She will have to help it-to stop smoking and look into her chest, where this new spirit grows, rising. When it senses that she is looking for it, it expresses a surge of joy just to be seen-the same way her father expressed joy when she went to see him or called. He was always so happy just to see her. In the exact same way, his spirit is happy to be near. Perhaps her father wanted her so close simply because the spirit inside of him did, for inside of her lived his spirit's kin-but in his life they were held apart in two separate bodies. Then they were, at last, reconciled.

Page 77
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rie@runinshae

It was a reminder of what a human self was, and what a human life was: not a beautiful glass lamp just this side of being broken, or a lovely gold ring with a single dent in it. But a battered old seashell, formed over millions of years, made to endure.