Pure Colour

The wondrous new novel from one of fiction's most innovative and influential voices, whose work, says Sally Rooney, "made me want to write" (New York Magazine), and whose last novel, Motherhood, has been called "a masterpiece" (Vulture).

Mira left home. Then she got a job at a lamp store. The lamp store sold Tiffany lamps, and other lamps made of coloured glass. Each lamp was extremely expensive. The least expensive one cost four hundred dollars. This was a month's salary for her. Every day, before they closed up for the night, Mira had to turn off every single lamp. This took about eleven minutes. Mostly she turned off lamps by pulling on little beaded cords. She had to be careful not to let the cord snap back and hit the bulb or the lamp. She had to pull the cords with a gentle sort of care. It was tedious work. Mira didn't have the morning shift. That person had to turn on the lamps. Their job was no better than hers.

 

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Pure Colour is a moving and astonishing novel, as unique as each of Sheila Heti's books have been, but also transcendent in a new way: a work that illuminates a full spectrum of thought and feeling. It's about "the world beyond this world"; about God and critics and school and death and love and fathers and orphans and lamps.

  SHEILA HETI is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction, including Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, which New York magazine deemed one of the "New Classics of the 21st century." She was named one of "the New Vanguard" by the New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a Best Book of 2018. Her novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine. She lives in Toronto.