mdpenguin's review against another edition
5.0
This might sound a little odd, but it took me a moment to realize that Gidney was a really good writer. Something about the selection and positioning of the words is a little on the plain side but the imagery that they convey is amazing. This is such a rich and beautiful book. It has this haunting quality that fills the reader full of the place and characters that's somewhat reminiscent of the haint that fills the artists with their compulsions to express her vision. It's effective, which is such a strange thing to say of such a romantic ghost story, but it really is the best way that I can describe the way that the author pushes images into the reader's heads. I think it helps somewhat that the imagery of the eastern MD marshlands made me long to be back in the marshes of my hometown, but I think that I'd have loved it as much even without that personal anchor. There are moments that aren't perfect – sometimes the way that memories are told feels a little out of place and forced a little to fill in some gaps, and the movement of the final two chapters seemed a bit choppy – but there's nothing that managed to push me out of the story or made me less curious about the characters. Overall, it's wondrous and wonderful.
undertheteacup's review
5.0
Haunting, spellbinding, very very queer and very very Black. Also, I would argue, fairly neurodivergent. Or at least read that way by me.
I loved all the POV characters immediately and worried about bad things happening to them, knowing that this was "dark fantasy".
This novel brings together not only various character perspectives and timelines, but also such themes as the fine line between artistic inspiration and all-consuming obsession, the role of artistic expression in putting ghosts and intergenerational trauma to rest, Western academia/art criticism's disdain for "crafts" and forms of art engaged in primarily by women and people of color, the generations-long wound inflicted by slavery which reaches through time and space to directly affect the lives of Black folks today... All this gets so elegantly tied in with the residents of a small fictional town in Maryland, positioned right between the ocean and a saltwater marsh that is full of life, and of ghosts.
I loved all the POV characters immediately and worried about bad things happening to them, knowing that this was "dark fantasy".
This novel brings together not only various character perspectives and timelines, but also such themes as the fine line between artistic inspiration and all-consuming obsession, the role of artistic expression in putting ghosts and intergenerational trauma to rest, Western academia/art criticism's disdain for "crafts" and forms of art engaged in primarily by women and people of color, the generations-long wound inflicted by slavery which reaches through time and space to directly affect the lives of Black folks today... All this gets so elegantly tied in with the residents of a small fictional town in Maryland, positioned right between the ocean and a saltwater marsh that is full of life, and of ghosts.
tsprengel's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
elizabethchant's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
catcouch's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
speculativebecky's review
4.0
Positioned as dark fantasy with a tinge of horror, A Spectral Hue follows a grad student named Xavier who travels to Shimmer, Maryland to study the loose collective of Black artists who’ve made strange and stunning artwork there, in a tradition that began with an enslaved girl named Hazel Whitby who became a prolific quilter. His story twines together with those of two other Shimmer residents, the unfolding history of the artistic movement, and the haunting that has produced it.
A ghost story that reckons with America’s brutal history of slavery, this book makes an excellent companion with fellow Lammy finalist The Deep by Rivers Solomon. It’s a magical, thoughtful, and unsettling read, and Gidney is a deft writer who packs so much into a few pages. I’m looking forward to checking out more of his work, but in the meantime I highly recommend this one.
Cw for slavery, homophobia, drug use.
A ghost story that reckons with America’s brutal history of slavery, this book makes an excellent companion with fellow Lammy finalist The Deep by Rivers Solomon. It’s a magical, thoughtful, and unsettling read, and Gidney is a deft writer who packs so much into a few pages. I’m looking forward to checking out more of his work, but in the meantime I highly recommend this one.
Cw for slavery, homophobia, drug use.
lizshayne's review
4.0
Today's episode of "what did I just read?" but in a good way.
Bold of Gidney to write a book about the imaginative use of color among a centuries-spanning collection of artists where all you're ever doing is trying to imagine what's going on. (Granted, that's also the point and the impossibility of the color is not just its place on the spectrum - in the sense that magenta doesn't exist and that's it's just your brain trying to cope with two wave-lengths that ought to add up to green but are definitely not green and I'm quite sure Gidney knows that - but that the whole speculative element of the story relies on what can and can't be seen. So of course it's a book.)
The whole thing is unnerving like that, although Gidney is extremely careful to keep the story within the realm of the narratively comfortable even as the premise and the scenery gets more uncomfortable. But art about art is just...like that and this is, for all its incisive observations about what constitutes art rather than craft and knowledge (and its production) and queerness as it intersects with race, is art about art. And it's just like that.
Bold of Gidney to write a book about the imaginative use of color among a centuries-spanning collection of artists where all you're ever doing is trying to imagine what's going on. (Granted, that's also the point and the impossibility of the color is not just its place on the spectrum - in the sense that magenta doesn't exist and that's it's just your brain trying to cope with two wave-lengths that ought to add up to green but are definitely not green and I'm quite sure Gidney knows that - but that the whole speculative element of the story relies on what can and can't be seen. So of course it's a book.)
The whole thing is unnerving like that, although Gidney is extremely careful to keep the story within the realm of the narratively comfortable even as the premise and the scenery gets more uncomfortable. But art about art is just...like that and this is, for all its incisive observations about what constitutes art rather than craft and knowledge (and its production) and queerness as it intersects with race, is art about art. And it's just like that.
klibri's review against another edition
mysterious
fast-paced
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
kaylal's review against another edition
5.0
A beautifully written novel about inspiration, ghosts, trauma, and ART. I loved the story of the mysterious color that inspires and tortures artists in a small town throughout history. I appreciated that Gidney was able to capture visual art (and different media at that) in written form.