Welcome to the twelth of my ‘Reading the Rainbow’ posts and the final for this year, in which I take the books I received in my 2023 book advent – each cover representing a different colour – and review them for you!
December is RAINBOW and the book is All the Invisible Things by Orlagh Collins.
Read on to find out more…
Blurb: A warm, witty, important story about being a young woman today, and what it’s like to find a real connection amid all the noise. Perfect for fans of Holly Bourne and Laura Steven’s The Exact Opposite of Okay.
With Pez, the days felt endless – cycling, climbing trees, sucking sour sweets till our tongues burned. I’d give anything to be that girl again.
For four years Vetty Lake has been keeping her heart in hiding. Since her mum died and her family moved out of London it’s felt so much safer not to tell people how she really feels. She’s never even told anyone she’s attracted to girls as well as boys.
But now Vetty’s seventeen and coming back to London she’s determined to start living out loud. She’s convinced that reconnecting with her childhood best friend Pez is the key. She was always fearless around him.
But when she sees Pez again, he’s different. Guarded. It’s like their special connection never existed. And suddenly Vetty’s sure he’s been hiding too.
Review: Anyone who has ever masked all or parts of themself in order to simply survive their teenage years will strongly relate to Vetty’s struggle in this story. She thought returning to her childhood home and childhood best friend would also return her to her childhood state of innocent, self-accepting comfort and is dramatically horrified to discover that she carries her identity issues with her.
And dramatic is certainly the word! I am an overthinker myself and tend to painstakingly analyse every social interaction but Vetty takes it to another level. Her self-analysis is so minute and painfully critical that I spent most of the book worried she would disappear in a flush of confused shame. I didn’t enjoy living that experience in my teens and Orlagh Collins accurate insight into the trauma of feeling different from your peers brought it all flooding back to me.
The story doesn’t only cover Vetty’s struggle to understand her bi-sexuality, but also touches on the difficulty of parenting a peri-puberty sibling and the dangers of porn addiction in an era when it is more accessible than ever before.
But the true heart of this book is Vetty’s journey to self-understanding and acceptance and her friendship with Pez – one of those true friendships where each person can be their unmasked, authentic self. I have been lucky to have experienced FOUR of those friendships in the course of my life so far (Clare, Aidan, Emily and Caroline) and so have personal experience of just how important and life-changing they can be.
I hope any young overthinkers struggling with their identity who pick up this book follow Vetty’s lead and come to value themselves exactly as they are, and also to treasure any true friends they make along the way.
I was just settling in, already the new girl with the dead mum and the funny name, who lives with her gay aunts. I didn’t need another thing singling me out. I learned quickly to keep some stuff back, but there are times when it’s as though I watched those friends from behind glass, observing them from the lens of my iPhone. Times I’ve wanted to explain that what they see isn’t all of me. Times I’ve wondered if they’ll ever know about the rest, the me that could at any point explode or take off like a rocket. Guess I never felt like explaining. I never had to explain anything to Pez. But maybe that was then, and this is now. Soon I’ll be back in London anyway. Soon I’ll be back to me.
– Orlagh Collins, All the Invisible Things
About the author:
Orlagh is a screenwriter and producer from Dublin.
She graduated from Dublin City University, BA (Hons) Communication Studies.
After many years in feature film production she pivoted to writing. Her debut novel, No Filter was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.
All the Invisible Things, published by Bloomsbury in 2019, was nominated for the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal and Shortlisted for the 2019 Irish Book Awards.
She is represented by Marianne Gunn O’Connor and Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks
Website: https://www.orlaghcollins.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ORLAGHCOLLINSAUTHOR/
Twitter/X: https://x.com/OrlaghCollins
