I just took a brief interlude into contemporary fiction, the first for a while. When @bobsphere recommends a book as highly as this one I know I will love it too. And I did. I sat up into the night to finish it. Unputdownable, good job it is short, I am an early bird and don’t survive late nights.

This is a short novella written in 500 postcard sized sections. There isn’t a linear timeframe but three stories unfold.
One is about the art of Yves Klein, who I really didn’t know much about but the more I read the more I loved. It is well worth reading about his life alongside this book. I guess the whole book is an ekphrasis, art in words, so you see and feel the pictures that are recreated in the book. Every short section features the word ‘blue’. Sometimes it feels squeezed in, other times you don’t even notice it, but it is there.

The other storylines are strange and beautiful reflections on time, love, loss and the many meanings of the colour blue, but not in a straightforward clinical way…oh and swallows duck and dive throughout the pages. I particularly loved the postcard no.d 345.. do you believe ideas are in the air and all we have to do is breathe them in? I do!

This book is a beautiful little sapphire. It is a forget me not…I could see elements of a few other novellas I love, Address Unknown (Kressman), The Employees (Ravn) and Silk (Baricco). Blue Postcards will be joining those treasured novellas on my favourites shelf.