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A review by richincolor
Those Pink Mountain Nights by Jen Ferguson
5.0
Review copy: Digital ARC via publisher
It’s winter and everything is cold at the beginning of this gem of a story, but warmth slowly seeps in through people and their relationships even though winter remains. As is the case with many books, much is jumbled at first–particularly with three different perspectives. I was sometimes needing to reread bits and sort things out, but that didn’t last very long. Over time, the voices and personalities became more distinct and their backstories were filled in enough to answer a lot of questions.
The teens at Pink Mountain Pizza work for money, but they also go there to have another space to exist. Young people spend most of their time between home and school, but in this third place, Berlin, Cam, and Jessie have the opportunity to learn more about their abilities and challenges and have a space to be something other than simply a child or a student. They also have time to get to know each other.
While they are learning, they are also sharing themselves and finding ways to offer support to one another. They are each very definitely facing challenges, but have all really been trying to cope on their own without relying on others. The difficulties include depression, grief, economic issues, racism, a learning disability, anxiety, childhood health trauma, and probably some others I am forgetting right now. Berlin, Cam, and Jessie have much to learn readers will see them stumbling, but also growing.
An image that is carried throughout is that of a pipe by Magritte that Berlin had seen in French class previously. Until I looked it up today, I knew that image by the name This is Not a Pipe, but didn’t know it’s other name, The Treachery of Images. The main characters are trying to project a particular image for others to see and have been hiding a lot, but are also trying to navigate the people and spaces around them to see the realities and not just what they think is there.
Berlin and Cam have connections from childhood and through the shared experience of being Native in Canada. Even when they are at odds, mostly due to misunderstanding what they see and experience, those things bind them together.
Recommendation: Get it soon. As the author explains in a helpful note at the beginning (which you can find in this sample), there are hard topics in this story including anti-blackness along with missing and murdered Indigenous women. But, there are also wonderful things like friendships and love in the face of such things and somehow there is a warmth within the pages that is comforting.
It’s winter and everything is cold at the beginning of this gem of a story, but warmth slowly seeps in through people and their relationships even though winter remains. As is the case with many books, much is jumbled at first–particularly with three different perspectives. I was sometimes needing to reread bits and sort things out, but that didn’t last very long. Over time, the voices and personalities became more distinct and their backstories were filled in enough to answer a lot of questions.
The teens at Pink Mountain Pizza work for money, but they also go there to have another space to exist. Young people spend most of their time between home and school, but in this third place, Berlin, Cam, and Jessie have the opportunity to learn more about their abilities and challenges and have a space to be something other than simply a child or a student. They also have time to get to know each other.
While they are learning, they are also sharing themselves and finding ways to offer support to one another. They are each very definitely facing challenges, but have all really been trying to cope on their own without relying on others. The difficulties include depression, grief, economic issues, racism, a learning disability, anxiety, childhood health trauma, and probably some others I am forgetting right now. Berlin, Cam, and Jessie have much to learn readers will see them stumbling, but also growing.
An image that is carried throughout is that of a pipe by Magritte that Berlin had seen in French class previously. Until I looked it up today, I knew that image by the name This is Not a Pipe, but didn’t know it’s other name, The Treachery of Images. The main characters are trying to project a particular image for others to see and have been hiding a lot, but are also trying to navigate the people and spaces around them to see the realities and not just what they think is there.
Berlin and Cam have connections from childhood and through the shared experience of being Native in Canada. Even when they are at odds, mostly due to misunderstanding what they see and experience, those things bind them together.
Recommendation: Get it soon. As the author explains in a helpful note at the beginning (which you can find in this sample), there are hard topics in this story including anti-blackness along with missing and murdered Indigenous women. But, there are also wonderful things like friendships and love in the face of such things and somehow there is a warmth within the pages that is comforting.