BOOK REVIEW
Book: Finding Color
Genre: Travel Memoir
Author: Candace MacPhie
Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah
Finding Color, a travel memoir, is the first book in the five-part Back in a Year series, based on Candace MacPhie’s memories, journals, photographs, and emails home. Beginning with MacPhie struggling to rebuild her life after her mother’s demise, the memoir follows her as travel opens up possibilities beyond the routine she has fallen into. The memoir takes the reader from Canada to Greece, England, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, and beyond, but the focus remains on the person who is doing the traveling. MacPhie herself makes the distinction clear: ‘If you are looking for a travel guide for city information, this is not it.’
Grief Too Travels
Finding Color is based on grief, emotionally. At the start of the memoir, MacPhie describes how her mother’s care had consumed a large part of her life, and the loss of her mother left her uncertain about what was left. A simple admission, ‘I don’t know what I like to do or who I am if I’m not looking after others,’ gives the travel that follows a deeper purpose. It is not just a story of wanting to see more countries. It starts when a person starts imagining what it would be like to live an independent life.
Crucially, MacPhie doesn’t make that process sound graceful. She tries to do things at home, like Tai Chi, toile painting, and dragon boat racing, but they don’t fill the void. Her description of that time is typically unvarnished: ‘This last year of “finding myself” has sucked, big time.’ That sentence also captures the voice of the memoir. There are serious emotions, but they are rarely dressed up to sound profound.
A Messy Sort of Adventure
The travel writing works because MacPhie allows herself to be ridiculous. She gets lost, drinks, has a hard time in new situations, stresses over relationships, overthinks things, and sometimes is uncomfortable in her own company. In Dublin, for example, she admits, ‘This is a prime example of how traveling alone can suck.’ These moments prevent the memoir from being an idealized tale of backpacking, where every problem magically leads to wisdom.
There is also a strong late 1990s vibe throughout the book. The source material itself helps create that feeling because while MacPhie uses her emails home as anchors, her journals, photographs, and memory provide what lies behind those carefully presented messages. Elsewhere, helping a new acquaintance set up her first Hotmail account, so familiar now, quietly reminds the reader of how different travel and communication were in those days.
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Discovering More Than Places
MacPhie is also acute about the curious connection between independence and loneliness. She craves freedom, but she doesn’t say that being single is automatically freeing. At one point she confesses that nothing to occupy her is her ‘personal red-hot danger zone’ because it leads her toward overthinking and homesickness. The honesty of such observations makes her growth more credible, for confidence comes in fits and starts.
The title thus becomes significant beyond the literal colors of unknown places. Grief has made the world seem duller before, even MacPhie’s clothes and surroundings. Later, tiny decisions become echoes of a changing relationship with herself. When buying a raincoat, for example, she chooses canary yellow instead of dark purple, a small detail among many that suggests a person becoming more willing to inhabit her own life.
Journey Worth Partaking In
That’s why Finding Color works: MacPhie avoids the trap of perfect hindsight. The narrator can observe the insecurities and contradictions of the young woman living the story while still permitting that younger self to be impulsive, funny, lonely, hopeful, and sometimes frustrating. The memoir that emerges is less like someone showing off a completed transformation and more like someone reconstructing how change really happened.
I’m rating Finding Color 4.5 out of 5 stars. The blend of grief, humor, travel, relationships, and self-questioning gives the memoir emotional heft, without ever becoming somber. Most of all, MacPhie understands that simply going somewhere new doesn’t necessarily make you a new person. What’s satisfying about the book is watching someone start to find out who she might become.
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PS: Buy Finding Color by Candace MacPhie on Amazon