The Colour of Things Unseen - by Annee Lawrence (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>A deeply felt love story between people of different nations, cultures and religions and the unseen impact of local and global events on individual lives.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>When Adi leaves his village in Indonesia to take up an art scholarship in Australia, he arrives in the bewildering Sydney art world, determined to succeed. Following his first solo exhibition at a chic art gallery, Adi dares to reveal his true feelings for his spirited friend, Lisa, and a passionate relationship unfolds. But will their differing expectations of one another drive them apart? A deeply felt love story between people -- of different nations, cultures and religions -- and the unseen impact of local and global events on individual lives.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>"Adi falls in love with Lisa, a young Australian woman from a conservative upper middle class family. Lisa is independent and has ambitions towards an academic career in the fine arts. Through their relationship, Lawrence explores the bumpy terrain of intimate crosscultural relationships - misunderstandings, the limits of second languages, and clashes in cultural values about family and gender expectations. Both Adi and Lisa take journeys that challenge them to revise the 'things unseen' that sit between them... Lawrence subtly weaves the personal and the political, individual and national histories, as Adi grows as a man and as an artist. She is unhurried in her meticulous establishment of Adi as a fully developed character. As she builds Adi, layer by careful layer, I found an empathy for him that, once established, remained unshaken through the book. And then again with Lisa, who must undertake her own reckoning journey."--Jenny Bird "byronwritersfestival.com"<br><br>"I've found much to enjoy in the way the author allows the story to evolve slowly so that it becomes so much more than Adi's life story, and whilst its focus is about love, relationships and family, it's also about trying to belong in a place where you feel out of step with those around you."--blogger "jaffareadstoo.blogspot.com"<br><br>"In telling the story of [Adi's] journey from Indonesia to Australia and back, and his maturation as an artist, the novel offers a compelling portrait of the rich cultural and political ties between these two countries as well as an acknowledgement of the silences and gaps that haunt their relationship."--Dr Shameem Black "Australian National University"<br><br>"Lawrence astutely blends this disassociation, this sensory overload with a strong sense of place: the vertigo-inducing skyscrapers, the unfamiliar tang of sea water and the impressionistic painting that is Sydney Harbour in sunlight. The same discombobulation happens to Lisa when she visits Adi's homeland ...beautifully captures the interfering ties we have to relatives (blood-linked or otherwise) and to other countries in our neighbourhood. It is here where we see the colours of things unseen."--Thuy On "The Australian"<br><br>Lawrence's flair for evocative, communicative writing and her skill with narrative are everywhere in evidence, even as her story ranges widely in time and place. It deals with the most intimate personal experiences and the largest questions of cultural identity and political and religious conflict.--Nicholas Jose "Editor of Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature."<br><br>In the wake of a tragedy, a young Indonesian man discovers renewal in art and struggles to find love in an unfamiliar land in this debut novel. When Adi is only 8 years old, his mother, Suriani, suddenly dies, a loss the Indonesian boy finds emotionally hobbling. He is filled with "burning rage," and in response to his chronic misbehavior, his father, Totot, sends him to live with his aunts. Eventually, Adi takes art and English classes from Pak Harto, a teacher who is impressed by the student's "naïve and driving curiosity" and storehouse of natural talent. Pak arranges for Adi to move to Sydney, Australia, for three years, where he can earn a degree in art--the school waives its tuition fee and a charitable foundation pays for the young man's living expenses. Adi is mesmerized by Sydney and, in particular, by Lisa, a nude model who poses for one of his art classes, a "young woman with pale mask-like skin, green eyes and full deep-red lips." Lisa is taken with him as well, but Adi is hesitant to pursue her, held back by the cultural chasm that separates them and by his poverty, a condition he believes makes him an ineligible bachelor. Lawrence sensitively portrays Adi's wonderment at his new life--both his art and his vision of the globe expand in response to a world of novel possibilities: "Something was changing inside him, and he sensed the sink holes that were opening up, and through which everything he felt or discovered was flowing right on into his art making." The author poignantly depicts Adi's burgeoning identity crisis--he feels neither Australian nor even fully Indonesian and wrestles to find himself within an existence made rootless by the premature death of his mother. Lawrence avoids any didactic moralizing--in the place of some sententious lesson, she crafts a beautiful, complex love story. At the heart of her tale is a moving paean to the power of art to recast one's view of the world, to generate a "new sensibility, a new way of seeing." A touching story that intelligently explores the potential for art and romance to bridge a cultural divide."<br><br>Lawrence's thoughtful debut probes the mind and spirit of a somber Javanese painter struggling to adapt to life in Indonesia and Australia. After a sheltered childhood in a small village in 1990s Java, Adi wins a scholarship at a Sydney art school. Once there, he is unsettled by his peers' outgoing personalities. Adi's Muslim faith also sets him apart, but his politeness and talent as a painter gains him new friends, among them Lisa Davidson. They fall in love and marry, but the relationship becomes rocky after Lisa chafes against Adi's expectations that she fill the role of a proper Javanese wife, whose purpose is to serve her husband and bear children. Lisa, pursuing her own doctorate in art history, isn't ready to be a mother, and Adi cannot grasp her perspective. After years of marriage, Adi returns alone to Indonesia in 2011, and Lisa eventually follows. She soon learns more about the world that created her husband's beliefs. Details of both Sydney and Java are delightfully described through an artist's viewpoint ("freckled patterns of blue-grey green in the roadside bush, the sun-split muddy yellows and subtle hints of red and pink"). This story of love and art impresses in its portrayal of the characters' hard-won success at bridging their cultural differences.<br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Annee Lawrence is an Australian writer who has an interest in exploring cross-cultural connection, and the way identity shape shifts in an unfamiliar place and culture. Her debut novel, <em>The Colour of Things Unseen</em>, is set in Sydney and Central Java. She was recently invited to talk at Ubud Writers festival about her work. She is also a tutor in literary and cultural studies at Western Sydney University and has published articles in <em>New Writing, Hecate</em> and <em>Cultural Studies Review</em>.
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