Notes on Her Color: A Novel

by Jennifer Neal Narrated by Angela Sullen

Overview

Gabrielle has always had a complicated relationship with her mother Tallulah, one marked by intimacy and resilience in the face of a volatile patriarch. Everything in their home has been bleached a cold white-from the cupboards filled with sheets and crockery to the food and spices Tallulah cooks with. Even Gabrielle, who inherited the ability to change the color of her skin from her mother, is told to pass into white if she doesn't want to upset her father. But this vital mother-daughter bond implodes when Tallulah is hospitalized for a mental health crisis. Separated from her mother for the first time in her life, Gabrielle must learn to control the temperamental shifts in her color on her own.



Meanwhile, Gabrielle is spending a year after high school focusing on her piano lessons, an extracurricular her father is sure will make her a more appealing candidate for pre-med programs. Her instructor, a queer, dark-skinned woman named Dominique, seems to encapsulate everything Gabrielle is missing in her life-creativity, confidence, and perhaps most importantly, a nurturing sense of love.



Following a young woman looking for a world beyond her family's carefully-coded existence, Notes on Her Color is a lushly written and haunting tale that shows how love, in its best sense, can be a liberating force from destructive origins.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Winner of the Vulgar Geniuses Award
Harper’s Bazaar, A Best Book of 2023
One of Electric Literature's Books by Women of Color to Read This Year
Debutiful, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Goodreads, A Buzziest Debut Novel of the Year

"A vibrant story of self-actualization . . . Riveting . . . A sweeping story of family, community, coming of age, trauma, mental illness, and the life-giving power of art." —Sarah Neilson, Shondaland

"At its core, this is a story of expectations, relationships and love." —Karla Strand, Ms., A Most Anticipated Title of the Year

“Notes on Her Color is not only a debut novel by Jennifer Neal, but also a musical composition. Each word is a note carefully considered before being etched onto the page with the hope of bringing art to life and feelings to the surface." —Aaron Coats, Chicago Review of Books

"In this coming-of-age debut, exceptional storyteller Neal paints a picture of racism and patriarchy in suburban Florida and one young woman’s journey to break free from it all." —Booklist (starred review)

"A haunting coming-of-age story, a melodic love letter to the language of music and a fierce, dark, rage-filled upbraiding of patriarchal violence . . . A fascinating commentary on race, power, invisibility and desire." —Laura Sackton, BookPage

"This novel sparkles with rich, lyrical, sensuous prose. It portrays dysfunctional family relationships, cleverly revealing their complexity and contradictions as the story unfolds. It is moving and desperately sad at times, yet not without hope. An original novel that will stay with me long after reading." —Jacqueline Roy, author of The Gosling Girl

"Remember how the half-hidden rides at amusement parks seemed riskier than the out-in-the-open, sky-high roller coasters? Because you’d hear a scream get swallowed up behind the façade of a mountain range and not know what was going to come next. Reading Jennifer Neal’s impressive debut, Notes on Her Color, a magical journey about music and race and queerness and passing and mothers and daughters, reminds me of those mysterious, thrill rides. While the twists and turns hide around the bend, you are also keenly aware that you’re being navigated safely, regardless of the illusion of danger. Then when you get dumped into the daylight, hair all mussed from the swerves, the first thing you want to do is to turn to your fellow passengers and recap every moment. Read this book. Come find me and we can bond over our shared joy. Weep over what we thought we feared." —Gene Kwak, author of Go Home, Ricky!

“Gosh, what a wonder this book is. It's about race, yes of course. But it's about so much more as well. It's a tale of mothers and daughters, of Florida hurricanes and the madness of music. It's about code switching in ways that you've never considered, and about what it means to be of a place and of a people. Jennifer Neal has written a book drenched in hurt and magic, love and grief. Read it twice, because a book like this comes along rarely.” —Sami Shah, author of Boy of Fire and Earth

"This is a coming of age story with a difference. With a generous helping of magical realism and the assured tenderness of a born storyteller, Jennifer Neal lays bare the brutality of how intergenerational trauma and racism conspire to teach us to hate ourselves." —Ruby Hamad, author of White Tears/Brown Scars

"Spellbinding and original, Notes on Her Color marks the arrival of a significant new voice in contemporary literature. Through the story of Gabrielle, a young woman seeking to transcend the 'orchestral catastrophe' of her home life, Jennifer Neal has crafted a vivid and powerful meditation on mothers and daughters, houses haunted by the living, and the redemptive power of love and music." —Tom Drury, author of Pacific

“This novel is an ode to the artistic and individual truth and an unflinching examination of soft-spoken suburban bigotry; it’s a crescendo of Florida hurricanes, first love, and the undeniability of becoming yourself. The remarkable protagonist of Notes on Her Color practices Chopin’s second piano scherzo, a piece described by Schumann as 'so overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love, and contempt.' The same is all true of Jennifer Neal’s lyrical and urgent debut.” —Rebecca Rukeyser, author of The Seaplane on Final Approach

Kirkus Reviews

2023-02-24
A young woman who can change her skin color searches for belonging and freedom from a difficult home life through music.

“My mother could change the color of her skin”: Gabrielle, the narrator, has inherited this gift, which she calls “passing.” Gabrielle is about to graduate from high school in Florida as the novel opens, and though her color-changing has been largely out of her control, she’s managed to keep her condition unnoticed by everyone but her parents. Her father, a Black lawyer with aspirations to be the perfect Republican, prefers that both Gabrielle and her mother (who is Black and Indigenous) pass as White when he gets home from work, to match their house’s all-white interior. “There were no dark things allowed in our home—except for whiskey, and him,” Gabrielle tells us. When Gabrielle’s father decides she should be pre-med at the University of Florida—“It's very competitive,” a campus tour guide tells them. “But it's a great program”—he demands she take a year off after high school to work on her extracurricular activities, giving her a better shot at admission. She begins taking piano lessons from Dominique, a young Jamaican woman whose brightly colored home and vibrant family life are everything Gabrielle wishes her own could be. Organized into parts corresponding to movements in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, Neal’s narrative takes us through Gabrielle’s struggle to understand who she truly is and what she wants at the same time that her family irrevocably shatters. Like Gabrielle herself, though, the novel never quite settles on how to present itself, and many questions of narrative logic—characters’ motivations and histories, how Gabrielle’s passing works—go unanswered.

Falls short of a magnum opus but with enough lovely notes to make it worth a look.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159859914
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	03/26/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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