Review: Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton
None of these stories are to be trusted, for they are stories of the dead told by the living and the living always lie. Leafing through a box of postcards at a Parisian market stall, the narrator of Douglas Bruton’s exquisite novella finds a distinctive blue postcard which he recognises at once. The colour is International Klein Blue (IKB), created by the avant-garde artist Yves Klein, and the postcard is an invitation to a 1957 exhibition of his monochrome paintings. Such a seemingly simple postcard, but within it is a marvellously intricate meditation about the way memory reshapes itself over time and how truth is often found in fiction. Bruton weaves together three fragmented narratives to create a story filled with passions that are never fully realised: that of the narrator, and his fascination both with Yves Klein and the colour blue; the lonely tailor, Henri, who sews a string of twisted blue Tekhelet threads into a seam in every suit he makes to bring the wearer luck; and Yves ...