Through It Came Bright Colors [Hardcover]

Trebor Healey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1560234512 | ISBN-13: 978-1560234517 | Publication Date: October 2003 | Edition: 1

A rich, poetic tale of a gay man's search for honesty and love in the face of tragedy and loss.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Sweet, sad, gritty, and real. Healey delivers coming out as apocalypse—tender, destructive, punk." -- Michelle Tea, Author of The Chelsea Whistle

Compelling tale of crisis around a family illness, unexpected first gay love is poetic and reflective, ANGRY, FUNNY, AND TRIUMPHANT. -- Felice Picano, Author of Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children, Men Who Loved Me, and A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay

About the Author

Trebor Healey's poetry has appeared in dozens of literary journals, including the James White Review, the Chiron Review, Long Shot, The Santa Barbara Review and Evergreen Chronicles, and has accompanied the films Penny Arcade and Peep Show in G. His fiction has been featured in the Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly and has appeared online in the Blithe House Quarterly, Lodestar, Asche! and Tina. Healeys work has also appeared online in Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists, Wilma Loves Betty and Other Hilarious Gay and Lesbian Parodies, Mama's Boy and Beyond Definition (also available from Turnaround), among others. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Harrington Park Pr; 1 edition (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560234512
• ISBN-13: 978-1560234517
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,649,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Trebor Healey is an American poet and novelist. He was born in San Francisco, raised in Seattle, and studied English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He spent his twenties in San Francisco, where he was active in the spoken word scene of the late 80s and early 90s, publishing 5 chapbooks of poetry as well as numerous poems and short stories in various reviews, journals, anthologies and zines. He received both the Ferro-Grumley Fiction Award and the Violet Quill Award for his first novel, Through It Came Bright Colors.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars rough and sexy and pure, November 4, 2003

By 

Greg R. Taylor (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Through It Came Bright Colors (Paperback)

From the first sentence, I felt pulled in. Trebor Healey starts his book with a poetic metaphor, but rather than being flowery and sentimental, it's a hard-hitting, earthy, and, yes, romantic opening that made this reader feel that he was in extremely capable hands.

The end of that chapter is as beautiful and perfect as a poem. It hit me the way a poem does, like a revelation, as if the page caught fire and blew a veil off my eyes, and then burned a layer of insulation from around my heart.

This book makes me remember when I first came to San Francisco, when I was young and living on Skid Row. My experience was nothing like the experiences of Vince, or Neill, or Peter, but I believe those characters, and I like them. Hell, I love `em, to tell the truth. They got into my heart in about two minutes flat and are staying there quite comfortably. It's so easy to love all the people in `Through It Came Bright Colors,' because the writing comes from such a deep place.

Reading this book, I sigh, and ache, and love, and remember, and sigh again.

But oh Lord, the last chapter. The whole book cast a beatiful spell on me, all rough and sexy and pure, but that last chapter spun the whole thing into orbit. Brilliant and holy: my mouth was on the floor reading it, and my heart felt as if an ancient knot was being unfolded and loosened at last.

A few days ago, I wanted to start rereading it, having forgotten I had already given it to my best friend!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complex characters, Gripping Narrative, December 23, 2003

By 

Salvatore Sapienza - See all my reviews

This review is from: Through It Came Bright Colors (Paperback)

For those of you, like me, who are sick and tired of the cookie-cutter characters present in many gay coming-out first novels, "Through It Came Bright Colors" is a welcome breath of fresh air. The characters are unlike any others I've experienced in recent gay literature. They're human in every sense of the word: real, complex, imperfect, and, at times, unlikeable. They've stayed with me well after I've put the book down, which is the highest compliment I can give a writer. The other posters here have nicely summarized the novel, but let me just add that "Through It Came Bright Colors" is ultimately about going into the wilderness (both literally and figuratively) to find one's true self. That wilderness (be it cancer, a run-down boarding house, or a hike in the mountains)transforms each of the characters, as they journey to discover the truth about themselves.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A NOVEL GRACED WITH THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY, September 8, 2004

By 

M. J. Arcangelini (Santa Rosa, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Through It Came Bright Colors (Hardcover)

In THROUGH IT CAME BRIGHT COLORS Trebor Healey creates believable, sympathetic characters (people any of us might meet in the urban landscape), then twists the plot elements just right
to keep the reader a bit off-balance, while handily avoiding the "gay novel" ghetto with a strong narrative thread involving the protagonist's brother's cancer and its effect on his family. Peter (the brother) and the parents may be less fully fleshed out than protagonist Neill and his love interest Vince, but that is how it should be. It is ultimately Neill's story - and a good one.
A favorite scene for me has Neill looking at SF and seeing the Sierra Nevada mountains. Healey leads us to the similarities between the two landscapes and, in doing so, highlights the vast difference. I love being in the Sierras so the section where Neill takes Vince up there was particularly enjoyable for me - and the unexpected direction it took was most effective. In the mid-70's I lived in a residence hotel in San Francisco and the experience was much as Healey describes life in Vince's home, the Baldwin Arms. Thus I find Healey's writing to be authentic when set against the standard of my own experience.
But it is Healey's use of language which sets this novel apart. His is clearly a poet's language and brings much pleasure simply on its own. Certain sections and individual lines jumped out at me and have lingered long after I put the book down. To cite just a few examples (without ruining any plot elements):
On page 53 he writes "Love was a much more physical thing than I'd ever understood it to be. It lived where his fingers touched mine; it's what made the water bead up on his shoulders and roll off; it's what made his skin warm, glowing and soft. I'd always thought love was some feeling in the mind, but this was the physicality of love: the love of the body, so much simpler; so much more useful." He is referring, in that passage, not to a lover, but to his brother's cancer-wracked and mutilated body. The feeling that passage planted within me was unexpected and profound.
I wish I'd written "the long bulb-studded strands of kelp unanchored and ambushed by flies"(p.77). I have seen that image on the beach so many times but never found the way to such a clear and accurate description. And on p.135: "Her eyes were like thick, clear glass when I reached her, as if her tears
had set up permanent residence atop her irises, refusing to recede of fall." This line not only describes a physical appearance, but uses that physicality to get deep into the being of the mother in a way that a more direct attempt to describe what she was feeling could never have done.
These are only a few of the many fine individual passages which work together to make this wonderful book something to treasure. It is hard to believe that this is a "first novel." I am eagerly awaiting his next one and hope that his poetry, especially a series of rare and increasingly hard to find chapbooks, is soon made more widely available.