Book review: All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

I read Chris Whitaker’s award-winning We Begin at the End  four years after it was published, only getting my hands on a copy a couple of months ago… and I loved it. So, although I avoid shops like the plague, I actually entered one (on purpose) last weekend to buy a copy of his 2024 release, All the Colours of the Dark – as I’d also heard excellent things about it. And there are a lot of similarities between this and We Begin at the End, not least is that they’re both predominantly narrated by children. And those children are from challenging homes with complex families. Like Duchess Day Radley the 13 year old who saw herself as an outlaw and looked after her 5 year old brother and their mother, here we meet Joseph Macauley – aka Patch – a wannabe pirate, with only one eye and raised by a loving but heavy drinking and often absent mother.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

Whitaker is an amazing storyteller. This book is long. Possibly a little too long at almost 600 pages. But it’s enjoyable nonetheless. It’s weighty – metaphorically as well as physically. In my notes (made while reading) I’ve commented that it felt episodic. Perhaps that’s because we sit in the (then) present with the unfolding plot for a while before moving forward in time. Set against a changing backdrop of world events from the mid 1970s to the early 2000s, this centres around Patch and Saint, initially inseparable best friends at 13 years of age, through tumultuous times starting with Patch’s kidnapping. He’s initially presumed dead. After all, it seems the kidnapper was after a teenage girl (Misty) so they’d have little reason to keep Patch alive. But the dogged Saint spends her time on ill-advised investigations and various allegations in her attempt to find Patch… eventually succeeding.

When Patch reappears he finds his world much-changed. His mother never recovers, his relationship with Saint seems strained, and he’s worshipped by a grateful Misty. And then there’s his obsession with a girl called Grace, also held captive at the same time as Patch and whose vivid stories saved his life and sanity.

That event shapes the lives of Patch and Saint. Patch can’t give up on his search for Grace despite having little to go on, while Saint becomes a police officer, determined to fight for the underdog. What comes next are snippets of lives lived (and not-lived) and held together by the deep roots of childhood friendship and unconditional love borne from crises and trauma.

‘This Saint, she loves you.’
‘No. She does it out of kindness, and maybe pity. I guess sometimes the two go nicely. I’m not about to turn either down.’
‘You don’t need charity. And I’ll bet that’s what Saint already knows. She’s being kind because she loves you.’
He shook his head. ‘She’ll see it now I’m gone.’
‘See what?’ she said.
He spoke without intent, just a brutal and complete honesty.
‘How little I left behind.’ p 103

Whitaker’s writing is again superlative…. I marked sentences and phrases here and there.

He was both brave and stupid in a way she could not understand, like he knew nothing of risk or consequence. p 44

And…

Patch contemplated his own sanity. Searching for a girl he could not place, from a time so distant he was met by only the most desperate. p 249

This is a bittersweet read, the reverberations of events causing tremors for years after and consequences not always matching the actions. A dichotomy of joy and sadness. It was a smidge long for me (like Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead), but I did love the sense of hope (despite everything) and the hint of second-chances.