“How can I expect people to empathise with a sickness they can’t see?”
“You don’t expect anything. You talk, you teach.”
Under Rose-Tainted Skies is the story of Norah, a teenage girl who suffers from agoraphobia, anxiety, OCD, and depression. All of this came about when Norah was thirteen and she has been homeschooled ever since, only leaving her home for weekly therapy sessions, which causes a great deal of anxiety for her. It is all very difficult to deal with and something she has to face on a daily basis. However she is not alone, and has the support of her mother who is there for her through everything. When a new family moves in next door she has a few interactions with Luke, and they slowly develop a friendship. Now Norah is dealing with a whole new set of feelings, and questioning whether she will ever be able to let someone in and experience a regular relationship.
“See, anxiety doesn’t just stop. You can have nice moments, minutes where it shrinks, but it doesn’t leave. It lurks in the background like a shadow, like that important assignment you have to do but keep putting off or the dull ache that follows a three-day migraine. The best you can hope for is to contain it, make it as small as possible so it stops being intrusive. Am I coping? Yes, but it’s taking a monumental amount of effort to keep the dynamite inside my stomach from exploding.”
There are many aspects of this novel that work really well, but there are a few that did not particularly click for me, which left me with some mixed feelings after reading it. Norah’s story is based on the author’s own experiences and struggles, which she does a stellar job of portraying and bringing across. I have a great deal of respect for her story, and sharing it in this way can undoubtedly reach and potentially help a lot of people to not feel alone in their own struggles. Norah’s feelings and frustrations are described and related in an effective way, and you can’t help but feel and understand those frustrations and limitations.
As I was reading, I did get the sense that the story had no clear direction and was unsure of where it was going. It’s not something I would have particularly minded, because I did very much like the characters and was happy to just go along with whatever their journey ended up being. However, the story itself goes in a rather strange direction and one that begins to feel like a different kind of book altogether, all of which leads to an abrupt ending. For me, the story as a whole doesn’t really come together, but as I said there is a lot that does work, the main one being the mother-daughter relationship, which was the highlight of the novel. Not the best novel of this genre, however it is one that is definitely worth reading.
“Sometimes things are going to happen and the only way out is through.”
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