Purple Is Never Just Purple

A colour can be a wavelength, a nervous-system event, a piece of cloth, a price, a bruise, a rank and a memory. The mistake is not choosing one account. The mistake is pretending the others vanish. Purple has a particular problem with purity: the colour wheel closes a line that physics leaves open, and the nervous system produces a coherent experience from separated inputs. The novel is interested in things that are constructed and still real—selves, memories, images, diagnoses, cities and relationships. Purple belongs to that family.