Picture Us In The Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert Book Review

This is one of those contemporary books with characters in a situation you come to learn is so frightening, yet lives in the truth, that you feel you owe it to yourself to look at other people like them and recognize the importance of respect. Especially when you imagine being on the flip side. Or maybe you are. That’s the biggest thing I got out of Picture Us In The Light.

Artist Danny Cheng is the only child of a mother and father who moved from Texas to California when he was a wee boy very out of the blue and he has no idea why to this day. But he’s been accepted to a prestigious art school and just has to get through this last year of Grade 12, but he’ll be very sad to say goodbye to his best friends, Harry and Regina. Danny’s community is additionally reeling because the one-year anniversary of the death of one of their classmates is approaching, and she wasn’t a friend to everyone but was very close with Regina.

What’s even more pressing though, is there’s something very broken with Danny’s parents and they’re refusing to explain what. Danny saw some papers involving some sort of big magnate, but wasn’t able to investigate them before they were moved somewhere else, and all of a sudden the family is really panicking about finances, and arguing like a divorce is certain in their future. Danny’s dad used to be a scientist on the verge of a big discovery, but for some reason he abandoned it, and whenever Danny suggests going back into the profession, he’s shut down intensely. What is going on?!

Something very quick to notice is Kelly Loy Gilbert’s quirky writing; I love writing sentences with lots of flavour and clever metaphors, and oftentimes I’ve found I have to insert a comma or two to clarify what I mean. Gilbert seems to really be enjoying herself as she writes this book, coming up with constantly clever ways to spin Danny’s journey. Most authors settle for plain.

This is also a book that has a big breaking point two thirds in, and I won’t spoil what happens, but there’s an act of rebellion Danny undergoes against his parents that is crazy but brilliant, and grounded in reality just enough for me to really imagine it happening. It is also right after a heartbreaking situation involving his secretive parents, and I’ll tell you this: I got very frustrated just like Danny with how they were clearly keeping things from him that he had a right to know.

We get occasional pauses in the story for a side-story, and they all seemed a bit randomized and hard to follow for me. Whenever a new pause came, I rolled my eyes a bit. Plus, the ending of this book is ambiguous. We don’t know what the fate is for Danny or his parents, or Harry or Regina. And that frustrated me a little bit. We also don’t have a satisfactory feel for every conflict. That dragged my grade down a bit because I finished the book feeling a little bit cold. But not every story has an ending tied up in a bow. This includes whether or not Danny will have a boyfriend or girlfriend one day. Sexuality is barely explored. Ultimately, I guess Danny didn’t feel the time was right for a relationship, but it’s still one of the ambiguous parts of the way the book ends.

My grade: 3.5/5