Official Review: The Color Master by Aimee Bender

[romymaria]

The Color Master by Aimee Bender is a compilation of short stories that blends together shades of the fairy-tale world and modern time. In her stories, Bender creates characters and worlds that are of the imagination and different from what we are used to; in doing so, the author allows us to examine the human condition without realizing we are actually examining ourselves. In her short stories, Bender’s characters endure things like a failing marriage, guilt, faith and materialism; which are things most readers can relate to. In this post-modern book, tangible objects help the characters establish an identity in the world. There is a strong reoccurring theme of materialism and it’s obvious that in Bender’s universe, her characters interact and love by investing in one another instead of talking and loving like humans do.
The Color Master is titled after the 17th century fairy-tale “Donkeyskin.” The short story dedicated to this title is a sort of prequel to the story . Bender connects the surreal and modern time by incorporating kings, princesses, and dresses that are the color of the moon. In the story, a young girl learns how to create colors from her mentor, the “Color Master,” who is dying. Throughout the story, the young Color Master has to answer several demands from the widowed king, who is trying to marry his daughter. In answering his wishes, she must make a dress the color of the moon, the sun, and the sky. As her mentor teachers her about color and the shades to put throughout the dress, she never fails to remind her, “to put anger in the dress.” This is an example of giving a character something tangible in order to find her identity. The Color Master tells her protegee that if she puts anger in the dress, upon receiving it, the princess will find the courage to run away.
The short story, “The Red Ribbon” is about a failing marriage and the wife’s obsession with having her husband pay her for sex. The unemployed wife feels that she can only be happy with him if she is financially supporting herself, and she finds a loophole by doing so, yet with her husband’s money. Once he stops paying her, she doesn’t want to have sex at all, and claims that if he stops, “She fears she will melt into nothingness.” Bender shows another great example of the human condition and how materialistic humans are. In the story, the wife is constantly writing down and keeping track of their sex life and the amount of money correlated. All she can think about is ways to spend her money and ultimately, make more money. Near the end of the short story, the wife has an epiphany and realizes that, “she has lost her generosity.” Yet she is clueless on how to get it back. In the beginning of the story, the wife was bored with the husband and felt that this way her only way of preventing herself from leaving; yet by the end of the story, it is revealed that the husband thinks about leaving, and the reader is left to assume that inevitably, he will leave her. Again, Bender creates characters that convey their love and feelings through acts that are not usually performed.
In “The Devourings,” another short story inside the “The Color Master,” the author weaves a story that incorporates ogres and taverns, along with magical cakes and cloaks. Depicting another failed marriage, an ugly woman marries an ogre because he makes her feel beautiful. They live together happily with six ogre children, until one night the father accidently eats all of his children. The wife deals with the consequences of marrying an ogre and is left wondering, “how can a marriage recover?” She allows her husband to pack her bag with a replenishing cake and an invisible cloak and leaves to find a “river,” when in reality, she is leaving because she can’t cope to be around him. Eventually the woman is drawn back to her husband when she sees him throw up her relatives (a thing unheard of by ogres) during war, and is an example of how Bender’s characters communicate in different ways than humans in reality do.

I highly recommend this compilation of short stories to anyone who enjoys a good twist on fairy tales. Benders style is beautiful and paints a picture of the rawness of humanity.