Kaleidoscope

How to explain Kaleidoscope by Cecily Wong? I've struggled with this since I finished reading it (for the second time this week) two days ago. So I'll start with someone else's definition and share where I disagree: “A dazzling and heartfelt novel about two sisters caught in their parents' ambition, the accident that brings it all crashing down, and the journey that follows.”

I think I was expecting something a little different, more straightforward, based on that blurb - for the parents to be more sinister and conniving, maybe, or for their ambition to be the direct cause of the accident. In my opinion, the book is more nuanced than that. It's an exploration of love and humanity, of the connections who make us who we are and what happens when we lose them - and, to borrow a titular phrase of Alice Sebold, the “lovely bones” that can take shape around these absences. It's a testament to Wong's writing that it manages to be both heartbreaking and hilarious, sometimes even at the same time.

This is a powerful story, one I had to sit with for a while. I read it on Tuesday and again on Thursday; I liked it the first time and loved it the second. I did have to work a little harder, as a reader, than I'm used to - there are several times when something's alluded to but only elaborated on later, and I had to backtrack to fit the pieces together to accommodate my new understanding. While this could be frustrating, in this case it added to the experience; when you hear Karen's (Riley's mother) profound frustration with her daughter's fundamental unknowableness, how it's not in her nature to accommodate or seek approval, this stylistic choice makes even more sense.

There's more that I loved about the way Wong told this story. I found the shift from first- to third-person at the start of Part 3 jarring, but on reflection, it was brilliant. Riley's sense of self has been shattered, so why would we expect to continue hearing from her directly? The disorientation of the reader echoes and reinforces her own.

I don't want to share too much about the story itself, but I will say that I loved it. The last book to make me feel this type of way was Maggie Shipstead's ‘The Great Circle,' and while the plots aren't at all similar, what's striking me is the twin sense of exhaustion and awe and appreciation I felt after each - for the range and depth of emotion, and the extent of journeys (metaphorical and literal!) that can be contained in one book. If you're looking for a quick beach read, this isn't it, but if you're looking for something you'll return to, that I imagine will resonate differently based on whatever's happened in your life between each reading - you'll want this.