by Roberta Kaye Waldbaum
Rating: *****
Waldbaum’s debut novel, The Color of Dreams, unfolds the story of Claire Brophy McPhee, an unconventional young woman who, having married well in the late nineteenth century, appears set for a pleasurable life of some privilege.
But, when her keen intellect and intense sensibilities become stifled by domestic life, she sinks into disillusionment, longing for the freedom to explore and feel the full texture of her existence…
The Color of Dreams is an exquisite little novel written in beautifully luminous and sensory prose that is utterly beguiling. It is full of sensuous rhythm and lush, immersive description, elevating the narrative into the echelons of literary fiction.
Claire captures the reader’s attention from the beginning with an ethereal, wistful quality. Waldbaum’s attention to detail is sublime, both in terms of Claire’s surroundings and her emotional responses which yield piercingly poignant observations.
Waldbaum interweaves Claire’s first-person diary entries, with an omniscient third-person narrator who shares her dreams, reflections, and backstory with the reader. This removed point of view, although close and intimate in tone, enhances the sense of Claire’s detachment whilst her journal thoughts allow the reader to absorb a rounded perspective of her personality and behavior from their immediacy.
Waldbaum uses her fragmentary techniques with deft brilliance, propelling the reader back and forth to reveal and highlight the psychological intricacies of Claire’s mind and her conflicted individualism as literal events occur.
Despite the elegant poise of Waldbaum’s writing, there is a whisper of foreboding from the start and a subtle, sub-textual charge of latent eroticism. And so it proves, as Claire’s deep introspective brooding gives way to depression and a desire to search for meaning. An aspiration that drives her to teeter on the edge of insanity and lose herself in escapism.
Notwithstanding, the story's thrust is precisely told, even as the action pendulums between the past, present, and future. The trajectory of her infidelity is revealed in tantalizingly short bursts, freighted with sexual tension and shrouded in secrecy.
The affair is a little underdeveloped, but Waldbaum’s writing is powerful enough that the reader feels its intense effects on Claire. Charles, Claire’s husband, is a vague figure who the reader feels some sympathy for and who could have been utilized more, and, in places, the plot is also a touch too nebulous.
Nonetheless, the narrative is underpinned by Claire’s languid, restorative sojourn in Umbria. Waldbaum excels in the fine detail of the natural environment and landscape, a landscape Claire finally seems to feel part of when she walks through it.
The scenes set on market day in the town of La F., are wonderfully vivid and richly evocative. However, as Claire keeps extending her stay, searching for unknown fulfillment, lurking desperation filters through the dreamscape Umbrian countryside.
The story swells with intrigue and unpredictability as timelines begin to converge, there are several avenues Claire could choose. Eventually, she takes the only one she considers open to her and one that confirms a gnawing suspicion to the reader.
Waldbaum also uses the conclusion to draw together the nuanced motifs and strands of symbolism that are woven throughout the novel and which lend an allegorical gloss to Claire’s compelling pursuit and her unknown, onward journey.
The Color of Dreams: An Umbrian Tale is mesmerizingly good. Highly recommended.
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