An emotive and lyrical journey

A tragic event has shaped the lives of one family, including a mother, father and daughter, but the author keeps us in suspense until very far into the book as to what that is, only revealing tidbits about some terrible circumstance that has changed and molded their lives into its present-day saga.



The story is viewed from the explicit perspectives of both mother and daughter. As one of the protagonists, Mia, the daughter, has the very special sensory condition of ‘synaesthesia’ in which the five senses are mingled in almost any combination so that feelings might be tasted on the tongue, or musical notes experienced as colors, thus the entire texture of this book has a different feel to it, as it gives a vibrant account of this unusual, but not totally rare state.[break]



The words of the book are thus written in beautiful tones that give the reader an added understanding of its characters and places. Describing her first experience of the sea in a typically synaesthesic way, Mia says, “the gelatinous seaweed sliming up through my toes, the sunlight splashing so brightly on the tips of the waves that I heard musical notes as I watched... and it turned me into a walking jelly.”







Whereas Mia’s father, Ian, represents a rather culturally engrained individual who is not able to perceive beyond his box. Her mother, Alida, is a freethinker who has been trapped inside the confines of events. As she charges off to present-day India to search for her daughter who has been declared missing, we hear in her voice an awakening to the truth of her entrapment and realization that she has been living in a clouded reality.



Acting as a soundboard for her to voice her sorrows, the intense Australian artist Taos whom she meets there, is aware of the tragedy of his own life. Now emerging from his own suffering, he represents the artist within her who needs to have a voice, an archetypal male figure able to help Alida open up to the truth of what she has become, and finally address the strained bond between herself and her daughter.



Although Alida does not obviously combine the senses in the same way that her daughter Mia does, she often borders on empathizing with what it means to experience life from another whole new point of view. This journey is her path of healing and awakening to unselfishness and a compassionate understanding of the pain of others through not only being wrapped up in her own sense of suffering.



Mia is equally submerged in her own problems and is deeply lacking in self-confidence as she, too, is trying to deal with what happened in the past.

“I think about the events that conspired to make me the person I am. I wonder when your life is ruptured by terrible events, whether free will can exist, because these events take an axe to your edges until the shape of you is barely recognizable.”



Living with the condition of synaesthesia as she does, her experience of India is vibrant and magical.



“I feel that no part of me can close itself off to India; it enters me from all around and, wholly submerged, I float in, I drown in it, sleep and dream and cry in it.”

The story turns into a trail of searching out the covered bond between Alida and her daughter Mia that was ruptured during her childhood due to the tragedy that took place. Having chosen ‘death’, Alida comes to realize that she had been wrong not to choose ‘life’ and now has to pass through a maze of clues that are to lead her to understand this very point.



Mia describes how she would feel as a five-year-old child, knowing that her mother was searching for her whilst she hid in a cupboard, waiting for her mother to find her. This habit was repeated often so that she could experience her mother’s love, and she describes the relief of the moment she would find her.



“I imagine the way it will be: a sudden shock of light and warm vanilla custard spreading around me in rings. She’ll scoop me up in her arms and I’ll feel the stretch of her smile on my cheek.”



Desperately shattered and lacking of trust in the basic goodness of life, Mia needs the constant reassurance of her mother’s love. This will turn into a lifelong habit that goes well beyond the walls of their family home and out into a world of a very different cultural frame that knows no boundary.



However, the main question that remains on the mind of the reader throughout the narration is indeed of the event that shaped Mia’s peculiar need for her mother’s undivided attention, and how both of them can cope with the situations that they currently find themselves in.

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