I received this eProof for free from Orion Chlildren's Books via NetGalley for the purposes of providing an honest review.Today, I want to talk about The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily X. R. Pan, which I reviewed back in April. But there is one particular element of this beautiful, heartbreaking story I want to focus more on today; Leigh's experience of living with her depressed mother.
As you may know by now, I have anxiety. What you won't know is that both my parents have depression. My Mum has had depression since I was around 11, and my Dad was diagnosed after I became an adult, so I understood depression more when he was diagnosed, and found it easier to deal with. But it's not something I fully understood as a pre-teen and a young teenager, and watching my Mum struggle was so, so hard.
In The Astonishing Colour of After, through flashbacks we get to see Leigh's memories of how depression affected her mum, Dory. Her decline, her recovery, and then her relapse that led to her death by suicide (at least this is what she remembers. We find out later in the book that Dory has had depression a lot longer than Leigh realised). I found myself relating to Leigh so much in these scenes. Mum's depression was never as severe as Dory's - where Dory struggled to even get out of bed most days, my Mum always made it up - I still found it difficult to deal with the fact that there was nothing I could do, or anyone could do, to make her happy again.
