“So much blue” by Percival Everett is a strange book to read and tell, it is a free interweaving of situations, environments, emotions and characters. But it is also controlled, regulated, as if a stream of consciousness of memories needs to emerge, but also to be domesticated so as not to overflow, not to be confusing. Reading this novel is like reading three in one, like exploring as many different countries that, only at the end, manage to find common sense, a common thread that unites them. The three hundred pages that make up the story are divided into three sections, “1979”, “Paris” and “Home”, which follow one another at intervals, thus creating interesting time changes, in which we can also see the different facets of the protagonist, Kevin Pace.
The writing of the American Professor Everett is delicate, but also raw when it has to be, thoughtful and inclusive, makes the reader feel in three parallel dimensions, from which it is difficult to alienate even once the reading is finished.
Although the themes are manifold, from art to war, what prevails is that of love, but not in a sweetened or banal version. Feelings emerge here in their most varied facets: there is rational love, but also irrational love, which makes you lose your mind, there is adult love, but also youthful love, there is love for children, but also the one for friends.
“So much blue” is one of those books that, initially, maybe they don’t take you enough, but then you wish they never ended.
