There was a time, not so long ago, when I blogged pretty much about every book I’d read. This year I’ve let that slip, which is a shame. It’s led to notable absences, such as posts on Adichie’s Dream Count, Ruth Jones By Your Side and Charlotte Wood’s Stoneyard Devotional. It’s a shame, as if I don’t do it straight away, I don’t remember what I’ve read well enough to give an honest account and the posts become bland, however I can’t go back. But I have just finished a great read, so, with no further ado, I shall give a quick review of Chris Whittaker’s **All the Colours of the Dark**. It was a book I recently part-read, part-listened to for a book club I’m in.

I found the book both interesting and easy to engage with. Although it was linear in progression, it didn’t slip into becoming what my friend describes as a “and then and then and then” book. I think this is perhaps due to the complexity of the characters and the exciting storyline. The book defies being easily categorised into a particular genre: part crime thriller, part family, part love story. It has a lot going on and a lot to keep the reader interested. Yet it doesn’t become muddled and I think manages all these different facets easily. In that way, it really is a book for everyone, perhaps the reason for its wide appeal.

The story is set in the Missouri Ozarks, where life is small and it is quite normal for people to perhaps never venture far out of time. Connection matters, and the minor characters are drawn effectively as stalwarts of the community, looking out for their fellow kind. I don’t want to get political, but I can imagine some of the characters being Trump supporters, but the good ones, who live honest lives and look after their own.

Patch is the key character, who we meet near the beginning of the novel after he gets abducted after saving his school out-of-reach but would-be sweetheart, who was the actual focus of the abduction. While in captivity, Patch makes friends and falls in love with a fellow abductee, Grace, and it becomes a lifelong search for him to find her and make sure she is safe. This is where much of the poetry and beauty in the book comes from, as Patch uses her vivid descriptions of life to draw and search for her.

As a child we see Patch best friends with driven, fun and adorable Saint Brown, a girl who basically gives her life to help his search and is irrecoverably in love with him. We follow her own story arc, which is both credible and moving, and linked tightly to other key characters in the story: Marty Tooms, Chief Nix, and her bus-driving grandma being the key players.

It is easy to see how and why this book is being adapted for TV, as there is plenty of breadth and scope to create a great series – the story arc is wonderful. As I mentioned, the book is on many layers a love story. In fact, several love stories intertwining: family love, friendship-based love, and also love born from trauma and survival. The well-trodden paths of justice, obsession and identity are woven into such a great storyline that it is fascinating to uncover it.

I found when reading the novel that I almost felt like I was a visitor to the town, slowly unearthing its secrets in the same way that Patch and Saint’s mission is to unearth what happened to Grace

Once I’d finished reading the book, I really wanted to know in what had inspired Chris Whittaker, so I listened to a couple of interviews, one a personal interview and one where he was part of a literary panel at an event. It was fascinating to hear him speak. A fair bit of what he writes seems to come from an unhappy childhood. He said that his mum, once separated from Chris’s dad, gained a terrible taste in men, and he was the subject of some domestic violence and abuse. A boyfriend once snapped his arm, breaking it, and he had to pretend it was an accident. He speaks of this candidly and openly, figuring himself out and his motivation for writing. It isn’t a huge leap to think that this must be where Whittaker gets his empathy from- an empathy that is needed to paint Patch so effectively, reflecting his passion for protecting those wronged in society (in the book, abducted girls). Whittaker also spoke about how he just writes reams and reams and, to some extent at least, it is his editor’s job to make sense of it all. He doesn’t write linearly, but rather haphazardly, and then it is all put together at the end, having been reduced by thousands of words. An interesting approach that reflects Whittaker’s creativity. Though upon learning this I did think, poor editor!

Overall, I found the book refreshing and original. I hadn’t heard of Chris Whittaker, but it seems that makes me unusual. Don’t you hate it when that happens? The book is unusual, perhaps, in that it has a proper crime-based plot, yet it is incredibly poetic too. The characters are exquisitely drawn (I defy anyone not to fall a little bit in love with Patch. Who doesn’t want to love a pirate, especially one akin to Robin Hood!). He has something of Barbara Kindsolver’s Demon Copperhead about him (particularly in relation to his troubled alcoholic mother). Both are, I think, characters that mums want to mother, fathers see on the straight path, and those of an age to be friends or lovers.

Patch is also just a little bit risqué and adventurous, out on that boat with his flag, huge wealth and eye patch, living beyond society’s norms and expectations, free, but feeling deeply. How could we not fall in love with him? The wonderful connection the reader make with Patch represents the connection we make to the book as a whole. It is our lives, but also just a little bit beyond what our lives can be. An intriguing read and one I’m glad I didn’t miss.