Is The Astonishing Color of After Worth Reading?
Ada’s Score
Emily X.R. Pan's debut novel, published in 2018, follows sixteen-year-old Leigh, a mixed-race Taiwanese-American girl who believes her mother, who died by suicide, has returned to her as a red bird. Grief-stricken and searching for answers, Leigh travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. The novel weaves together magical realism, cultural identity, and a moving portrait of depression across generations with luminous, painterly prose. It is an emotionally immersive and deeply compassionate novel about loss, memory, and the bonds that transcend death.
“Pan writes grief in colour. This novel is achingly beautiful — part ghost story, part family odyssey — and it handles mental health with rare tenderness.”
Ada Brief
AI reading intelligence“Pan writes grief in colour. This novel is achingly beautiful — part ghost story, part family odyssey — and it handles mental health with rare tenderness.”
Book Details
- Publisher
- Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
- Published
- January 1, 2018
- Pages
- 241
- Language
- English
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Affiliate linksISBN: 9780316464017
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Ada’s Score Breakdown
4.4
This breakdown reflects how Ada weighs the book’s strengths and flaws, not aggregated reader data.
Common Questions About The Astonishing Color of After
- Is The Astonishing Color of After worth reading?
- Pan writes grief in colour. This novel is achingly beautiful — part ghost story, part family odyssey — and it handles mental health with rare tenderness. Ada rates it 4.4 out of 5.
- How many pages is The Astonishing Color of After?
- The Astonishing Color of After is 241 pages long — around 5–6 hours at an average reading pace.
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