Rating: 🌕🌗🌑🌑🌑

I was reading this out in the sun on a Friday afternoon when I noticed a stickiness on my hands; warm and watery, oozing out of the book and onto my lap.

Yes, like jizz.

Bear with me.

To use the language of the book, Pure Colour is an ejaculation of Sheila Heti’s soul into the body of anyone who dares read it.

There are many books out there that are masturbatory in nature — War and Peace is an example of that, and so is Dune (you’re welcome to hate me), and so are many autobiographies. Unfortunately, the nature of such a work means that it often misses the mark, and ends up being no more than a big sticky mess all over the goddamn carpet.

This book here is one such addition to the global and ever growing library of self-fellating works.

Some authors, feeling a kind of obligation, will bring the reader a warm, wet cloth of a closing chapter to wipe the slime off your face. Some won’t. Either way, the act is the same.

I was not bothered by the incestuous overtones, even though this is a somewhat autobiographical work of fiction, and Sheila herself, in an interview, said that the moment of her father’s death truly felt like the universe ejaculated his spirit into her, “then spreading all the way through her, the way cum feels spreading inside, that warm and tangy feeling”, and that there was no better way to describe it in the book. Her words. I’m not here to pass judgment based on one paragraph — that’s your job. I respect her sincerity.

What’s troubling me is that at the end of this author-reader jizzfest I find myself severely dissatisfied. Sheila is out and on her way to write another book, and I’m left all alone, staring at my face in the mirror while I dip a towel in warm water to wipe myself clean. Later, in my journal, I put down the date and write one word — “Why?"

Fine. Here it is in plain, cum-free words: this book is two hundred and sixteen pages of pseudo-profound bullshit. It is described as a “galaxy of a novel, a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great and terrible things about being alive”. Aside from a few thought-provoking sentences, it is none of those things. It’s an atlas of confusion and repetitive, meaningless drivel.

Should you think I’m being too harsh, take this paragraph from early in the book (chapter 1):

“Over the next few weeks, any time Mira and Annie ran into each other, something widened inside of them.

Something was opening in Mira’s chest, a portal to Annie and her open chest, which was widening in the direction of Mira. This widening was something that Mira had never felt before, or even known could be.

It was like a vagina was stretching for a very large cock, but it was in her chest that this stretching was happening, in the part of her that usually kept love out, that firmly preserved her insides. This was how she normally lived—with that part of her sealed shut.

But now it was opening almost too wide, and a similar thing was happening in Annie."

That’s just the warm up. I suggest (but do not recommend) that you read the rest of the book for the full experience. I’ll grant it one thing — it’s light, and took me about 4 hours to finish.

I must reveal to you, hesitantly, that Pure Colour won one of Canada’s most prestigious awards — the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for English-Language fiction. This award was also given to Margaret Atwood in 1985 for The Handmaid’s Tale, a slightly less hollow piece of work.

I feel some guilt speaking of the book in this way, especially when I’ve published exactly 0 books myself. I tend to reserve my most honest (and meanest) self for authors that are dead and deprived of access to the internet. In this case, however, I think the 10,000 five star reviews Sheila Heti has earned will more than make up for the inconsequential words of a nobody like me.

I’ll nip off to widen my chest and be a lemon now. Perhaps if I open myself up enough, the universe will ejaculate warm wisdom into my soul, and I’ll finally get it.

Some tidbits (including bits I liked):

They just didn’t consider the fact that one day they would be walking around with phones in the future, out of which people who had far more charisma than they did would let flow an endless stream of images and words. They just had no idea that the world would become so big, or the competition so stiff.

They never saw a video of how another girl fixed her hair. They didn’t even know that other girls fixed their hair. Everything, other lives, and the thoughts of people who were not themselves, were all so equally far away. All that touched them was each other, and the books they read, and the music. Did any other kids exist? They certainly didn’t think so.

Over the next few weeks, any time Mira and Annie ran into each other, something widened inside of them. Something was opening in Mira’s chest, a portal to Annie and her open chest, which was widening in the direction of Mira. This widening was something that Mira had never felt before, or even known could be. It was like a vagina was stretching for a very large cock, but it was in her chest that this stretching was happening, in the part of her that usually kept love out, that firmly preserved her insides. This was how she normally lived—with that part of her sealed shut. But now it was opening almost too wide, and a similar thing was happening in Annie.

Later, walking in the garden out behind his house, another hour deep into the middle of the night, she knew that the universe had ejaculated his spirit into her—and was it still in her?

When the spirit of her father came into her, it paused a moment in the air between them where it was purified, and then what entered her was the purest love and elation. This is what the universe ejaculated into the deepest cells of her, or into what is deeper than cells.

She had felt his spirit ejaculate into her, like it was the entire universe coming into her body, then spreading all the way through her, the way cum feels spreading inside, that warm and tangy feeling. But this feeling was even warmer, and even more spreading all the way through her, and the peace after an orgasm was nothing compared to the peace that fell over her after his death.

The gods sometimes take the form of a bacteria or virus, and often that’s what an illness is—just a swarm of invading gods. Then part of what’s so exhausting about being ill is that you have been invaded by the gods. They are using your body to watch someone near you, to see what humans are like in this draft of the world, so they can make them better in the next one.

Perhaps now that he is dead, she can marry her father. Mira spontaneously had this thought, then she went into a leaf.