The Colour of Memory (Paperback)

I like Dyer's characters, I care about them. I find them real. They are sweet, sincere, kind people, with strong bonds of friendship. I care what they do, I enjoyed being part of their time together, time when often little happens but they enjoy eachother's company and the passing of time. I felt that male friendship was touchingly portrayed. These men have feelings (of course), they show them, not through flashy shows of emotion and "new-man" (this was before the "new-man of course!), but in the care they show one another.

Above all, I like that Dyer enjoys words. He clearly cares about language, and paints with it. The book is very sensual - lots of visual passages, but plenty of sounds and smells, too, and the feeling of hot or cold - depending on the season - well-evoked. In a couple of places I worried the prose was moving slightly towards the purple (but only everso slightly!). And in a few places I found the repetition of fire or jet-trail imagery a bit tiring, though on reflection, I think this adds to the feeling of repetition in the lives of Dyer's characters, who do live in a bit of a cycle.

I like Dyer's observation of detail, and the way that through this Brixton becomes almost a character in the novel. Though he acknowledges the bleak, miserable environment these friends inhabit, he does find the beauty in it, and conveys that beauty admirably.

I found the ending touching, it made me think back to earlier passages, and really tied the book up well for me.

I have read that Dyer is working on a book about a series of photographs. This makes perfect sense to me, as there is a lot of that in this novel - photographs evoking memories and wonderings. I will look forward to that book.

Certainly this is a novel I would recommend to friends, and one I know I will re-read.

In Colour Of Memory, Dyer describes in beautifully vivid detail a series of intimate snapshots of life lived day to day on the margins of Thatcher's Great Britain in the mid-1980's. The novel begins with a kind of lost generation, Hemingway-esque line; "In August it rained all the time-heavy, corrosive rain from which only nettles and rusty metal derived refreshment". From this line onward, the tone is set with the narrator losing his low-paying, unengaging, government-sponsored job as well as being evicted from his Brixton apatment. Narrator and friends are all portrayed by the author with a wistful, near-biographical approach; discussing the Darwinist, capitalist landscape of Tory-dominated Britain, listening to Maria Callas on a cloudy afternoon, arguing the merits of John Coltrane's sixties-era recordings, smoking strong dope on the roof of the narrator's flat, attending parties in dangerous neighborhoods and just scraping by while trying to nurture their separate, artistic ambitions. Without question, the characters of Colour Of Memory, narrator included, are all 1980's beatniks of one kind or another and the novel makes clear how quixotic a life this really is, living in a society and an atmosphere that values financial prowess and ordinary survival skills over creativity of any variety.

What takes place on the pages of Colour Of Memory is seemingly woven together with an invisible thread, there appears to be no obvious plot, rhyme or reason to the action. Yet, the reader is propelled forward through one shimmering vignette after another, one can't articulate why, one just seems to feel some connection to these people and therefore cares about what comes next, no matter the order of happenings. Colour Of Memory could be seen as self-indulgent and a trifle mundane, but fortunately for the reader it easily escapes this fate by presenting itself as a compelling group of beautifully written recollections, sometimes sad, usually funny and certainly tracing the beginnings of a great writer. Maybe Dyer summarized this novel before it even began with a quote from John Berger, probably his biggest influence: " What remains of our hopes is a long despair which will engender them again".