Yellow

I sorta wrote my art history master's thesis on the color yellow, so, naturally my interest is a little piqued when I hear about similar studies. I swear I read a different description of this book when I ordered it... it wasn't anything like I thought it would be, but, who cares? Sometimes we stumble onto things.

The book is called (what else?) Yellow, by Janni Yisman, a British writer (who went to the Slade, no less). Yisman and I clearly share some common ground on color theory, and particularly yellow color theory, but the book just minimally touches on those subjects. It's about an agoraphobic (hey, another shared interest!) and work-from-home (naturally) aromatherapist who's suspicious of the guy she's dating.

Without going into the details of the plot, I'll say that Visman's book is quite interesting for the way she very sparingly writes about rather luscious things like scents, touch, peeling and eating, for example, an orange. For example:

Ylang-ylang for shock.
Tangerine for emotional emptiness.
Rosemary for disorientation.
The oils are effective. I am neither languid with despair nor rigid with anger.

She has an ascetic style:

On my left foot, I have a red shoe. On the right I have a blue. The cat is watching me look at my feet.

When I first started reading it, I thought, Oh dear god, not more of the soi-disant 'prose stylings'! I was afraid I'd fallen into another Never Let Me Go, although it's not nearly as agonizing as that. In fact it's hardly agonizing at all! Now, what kind of recommendation is that?

If someone in the continental US wants to read it, I will gladly mail it to you!