Blue Hour

Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison is a stunning, intimate and powerful piece of storytelling. We follow our narrator, a talented photographer and artist documenting a conflicted world and her response to it as a biracial woman in America. The novel explores many themes including how tragedy and grief can shape us, the impact and challenges around loss and motherhood, and racism and prejudice exposed by police brutality in our society. The perspective of our narrator is powerful and insightful, as a student of hers Noah is a victim of such violence she begins to question what it means to bring a Black body into the world. It is a novel of conflicts, the soft and strong, hope and pain, life and loss which is heartbreakingly realised in the interior of the narrators dialogue on her life and responses. It is a difficult read at times including scenes of miscarriage, police brutality and violence so please be aware of the content but I felt it highlighted all these aspects in an important, emotional and essential way. As our protagonist does she translates and centralises these issues in her art showing how to survive and hold onto the truth in a world with little accountability or justice. Powerful and moving for fans of heartbreaking literary fiction 4.5 Stars ✨

“Blue Hour” by Tiffany Clarke Miller is a captivating journey through the complexities of human emotion and connection. Through eloquent prose and nuanced characterizations, the author navigates themes of loss, redemption, and the pursuit of truth. As readers journey through the narrative, they witness the characters’ struggles, triumphs, and moments of vulnerability, each resonating with authenticity and depth. It is a compelling read that will linger in the mind long after the final page is turned.

The unnamed narrator of Tiffany Clarke Harrison’s powerful, deeply moving Blue Hour is a photographer of mixed race whose parents and younger sister died in a car crash for which she blames herself. Her husband, Asher, passionately wants a child while she is ambivalent, her own desires overshadowed by guilt and the dangers a child of theirs would face on the streets, and when she does conceive it ends in sadness and loss. When a student on the community photography course she runs is shot, she decides to make a documentary, interviewing the mothers of children murdered because of the colour of their skin.

Harrison unfolds her brief novella in an episodic narrative flashing back and forth between past and present. Her writing is often poetically lovely, studded with vivid images that fit our narrator’s photographic eye. I found myself constantly scribbling striking quotes but hers is not a showy style, more subtly powerful underlining the narrator’s journey from intellectualising her pain to feeling and facing it. The miscarriage scenes are unflinchingly visceral - readers who have had the misfortune to lose a child or are close to someone who has might want to avoid this one. Racism and police brutality is the underpinning theme of the novel but it’s the love between our narrator and Asher, and their struggle to have a family that is to the fore. A beautifully express piece of fiction that ends in hope.