There are coming-of-age novels and there are coming-of-age novels and then there is Cintra Wilson’s coming-of-age novel: Colors Insulting To Nature, which manages to glean all of the emotional intimacy and intensity of the genre without wallowing through that deadly duo of pitfalls: self-absorbtion and self-pity.
I’m about half-way through my second read and am amazed again not only by Ms. Wilson’s acid-tongued attacks on “family values,” the 80’s, and adolescent angst, but also her keen insights into the complex dynamics of the the highly impressionable, media-saturated mind struggling to make a go of it in the real world.
Sad-funny and funny-sad, it’s a blast of a read.