Full Color

Xeric Grant–winner Haven Britt offers a dark, unrelenting story of petty drug dealers, spoiled rich kids and a tormented woman on the edge of oblivion in a truly unsettling one-sitting read. Boom has had it with her job—specifically the boss who steals the glory for her work—so she enlists the help of sometimes friend David, a drug dealer whose ambition far surpasses his intelligence, to score her a gun. They intersect paths with Lilly, one of the book’s few sympathetic characters, and in a haze of alcohol and a swirl of dark imagery, race toward the events of a night that can only end in tears. There are drug deals in dorm rooms; quiet asides about the torment of being a creative person; and a clipped style of dialogue that suggests Tarantino without the sense of humor. The ending feels inevitable, but does nothing to detract from the tangible sense of menace—chiefly thanks to the scenes involving Boom staged on stunning backgrounds of abstract imagery and inky fury. Typeset lettering and jagged, angular, almost angry thought balloons contribute to the book’s singular tone and style. The title belies that the story is told in stunning black-and-white—this story could be told no other way. (July)