Pure Colour

Staff Top Fives

Our booksellers' favorite books of the year!

Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.

You may have heard that this novel is different. You may come to it expecting something unlike anything you’ve read before. Even if you feel prepared for it, this novel will astonish and move you. I cannot imagine that there’ll be another book this year that I spend so much time thinking about after I’ve finished it. Recommended By Keith M., Powells.com

Here we are, just living in the first draft of Creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.

In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira's chest like a portal — to what, she doesn't know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she's left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.

Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.

"Heti's latest is that rarest of novels — as alien as a moon rock and every bit as wondrous." Kirkus Reviews

Sheila Heti is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, which New York magazine deemed one of the "New Classics of the 21st century." She was named one of "the New Vanguard" by the New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a Best Book of 2018. Her novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine. She lives in Toronto.