The Colour of Milk

The Colour of Milk

Nell Leyshon

 

In this edition, we turn our attention to Nell Leyshon’s ‘The Colour of Milk’.  This novel has been compared to Alice Walker’s classic ‘The Color Purple’ and Margaret Attwood’s magnum opus ‘Alias Grace’ and  there are certainly similarities between these books both in terms of style and content.  If you are going to read ‘The Colour of Milk’, it is worth noting that, despite its short length, it is filled with are images that are both haunting and traumatic:  this is not a novel for the fainthearted.  One critic has written that it was a book that they ‘read in a couple of hours but the characters remain with me for weeks.’ 

 

The year is eighteen hundred and thirty one.  Mary – the narrator and sole voice in the novel - is fifteen.  She is a hardworking farm girl who is both powerfully self assured and yet naïve about the world.  Mary is sharp tongued, beautifully observant and strong willed, as is demonstrated by her refrain throughout the novel: ‘this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand.’  Mary moves from the harsh reality of an abusive father and an emotionally disengaged mother into the home of the local vicar, where her chief task is to look after the vicar’s wife during a long and protracted illness.

 

At the vicarage she is taught to read and write – which becomes the key sign of her freedom and developing power.  At the point in which she has power, however, the question facing her is how she will use it, and what the consequences of her actions might be.

 

The novel is heavily stylised.  It only uses lower case letters, and the narrative flow seems unsophisticated and childlike.  The novel’s other protagonists are caricatures,  sketched into the narrative by their flaws and failings rather than by their appearance or fortitude. 

 

Leyshon weaves a rural narrative strongly through the novel, with the chapters or sections of the novel reflecting the changing seasons.  The pace of the novel brings with it a sense of foreboding, as the pages quickly turn towards its heartbreaking finale.

 

Although beautifully crafted, the narrative never falls into a perfect idyll, and the final twist in the novel serves as a tragic climax to the story of a girl whose hair is the colour of milk.

 

Questions for discussion:

 

How does the style of the book affect your engagement with the story and the characters?

 

There are a number of tough events and themes in the book.  Which do you find the most shocking, and why?

 

What, in your opinion, is Mary’s main disability?

 

The novel is written from Mary’s perspective.  Who’s voice would you like to hear from next?  Why?  What do you think they might say?

 

What is the biggest tragedy in the novel?

 

What is ‘freedom’ and how it is exercised (or abused) by the characters in the novel?

 

If you were writing your own story, in your own hand, how would your story start?