A Blue So Dark ~ Holly Schindler

Terrified that her mother, a schizophrenic and an artist, is a mirror that reflects her own future, sixteen-year-old Aura struggles with her overwhelming desires to both chase artistic pursuits and keep madness at bay.
As her mother sinks deeper into the darkness of mental illness, the hunger for a creative outlet keeps drawing Aura toward the depths of her own imagination—the shadows of make-believe that she finds frighteningly similar to her mother’s hallucinations.
Convinced that creative equals crazy, Aura shuns her art, and her life unravels in the process. {from Goodreads}

I find it ironic (in that Alanis Morrisette way, that is) that a book about a girl caring for her schizophrenic mother is the book that managed to pull me out of my reading slump and make me feel alive and hopeful once again. But, OH MY GOSH, how I love this book!
Aura’s story pulled me in quickly and I didn’t want to stop reading. Her voice was pitch-perfect, and I immediately empathized with her struggle to care for her mother without help from anyone. As Aura’s history in dealing with her mother’s schizophrenia is revealed, it is obvious that her relationship with her mother is complicated but full of love. Schindler does an excellent job of showing Aura’s struggle to keep her mother’s illness a secret, even at the cost of living her own life.
As Aura looks at her family history of creativity, as well as the role genetics plays in addiction and disease in a neighboring family, she is 100% sure that creativity leads to mental illness. At times I was surprised that Aura would be so naïve to believe this to be a hard-and-fast rule, but through Aura’s memories of her mother and her own experience with her own artistic endeavors, it quickly becomes apparent how she could easily convince herself that this would be so.
While the majority of the story does focus on Aura and her family, including her remarried father and estranged grandmother, there is a subplot with a boy Aura has a huge crush on. First of all, I will say that Schindler tells so much story with so little time devoted to it that I marveled at her skill. Secondly, there is a scene with Aura and Jeremy and a skateboard and a drainage ditch that blew my mind. Not because it was oh-so-romantic, but because of how Aura was affected by it in that moment. It was a perfect merging of the two plot threads, and quite possibly one of the best scenes I’ve read all year.
The subject matter of this book is, without question, heavy. However, it’s not like when you’re forced to read The Bell Jar and end up feeling so depressed that you can’t sleep and feel sick for days. (Wait, that was just me? Oh, okay then, never mind.) There is breathing room in this book, and little rays of sunshine manage to shine through the darkness every now and then. It is an amazingly wonderful read.

Published: 2010 by Flux

Pages: 266