Natural Flights of the Human Mind (35 page)

“Morrall’s ability to plot the destruction and reshaping of Kitty’s mysteries, while still plausibly unpacking her character, is nothing short of stupendous.
Astonishing Splashes of Colour
is a brave and startling book, tinted, shaded, and stained like life itself.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Beautifully subtle…. It draws the reader in page after page.”

—Boston Globe

“Compelling…. Morrall is a sure, sharp writer, and she understands the single-minded nature of grief.”

—Newsday

“Propulsive and compelling…. A gripping [story].”

—New York Times Book Review

“An extraordinary, gripping novel written with no sentimentality. A wonderful piece of writing.”

—Professor John Carey, Chair of the Man Booker Prize

“At her very first attempt, Morrall has written a genuinely solid and satisfying work of fiction, skillfully plotted and fielding a cast of fully realized and individualized characters. More, please.”

—Sunday Times
(London)

“
Astonishing Splashes of Colour
remains ‘a core of truth, suffused with a golden glow, becoming more pleasurable the more [it] wander[s].’ For even madness is not without order and logic; it has a vision and an arc of forward movement even when it’s turning in on itself.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Clare Morrall takes her title from a description of Peter Pan’s Neverland, and much of her novel contains the same dreamy, almost fantastical quality, with episodes coming in and out of focus, amid kaleidoscopic bursts of color, as the main character struggles to search for the truth about herself…. Such tragic material is lifted by the sympathetic writing of a first-time novelist confident of her material…. The story is bleak, but the colors are bright.”

—BBC News online

Astonishing Splashes of Colour

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

NATURAL FLIGHTS OF THE HUMAN MIND
. Copyright © 2006 by Clare Morrall. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Morrall, Clare.

Natural flights of the human mind: a novel / Clare Morrall—1st Harper Perennial ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-10: 0-06-084336-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-084336-6

1. Alienation (Social Psychology)—Fiction. 2. Neighbors—Fiction 3. Devon (England)—Fiction. I Title.

PR6113.075N38 2006

823’.92—dc22                   2005055103

EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200868-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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