March 2018

In ROSIE COLORED GLASSES by Brianna Wolfson, Rosie is the fun mother. With her daughter, Willow, she will play dress-up; a party with a candy fest in the middle of the night is not untypical. Rex is less impulsive. He is the serious parent. While Rex loves Rosie, their lives collide too much to stay together. After the divorce, the children bounce between the two parents. Rex is a traditional dad, while Rosie’s behavior becomes more and more erratic.

Readers see that something is not normal here. Rosie is bipolar, and she is unraveling. What does Willow see? Does she still wear the rose-colored glasses, or is she ready to understand her mother for who she is?

Mental illness is a part of so many families, and it’s looked at honestly in this novel. Brianna has had her share of divided parenting and clearly can channel Willow here. Her own mother died in a car accident on the way to visit her at camp. This is a tragedy in itself. Even more tragic is that she overdosed on the way, and in fact spent most of Brianna’s life parenting while abusing drugs. Brianna writes authentically about a life divided between rigidity and whirling out of control. 

ROSIE COLORED GLASSES opens with words of love, full of imagination and wonder, and then it slips into haunting loss and longing. But oh, how the love remains…and fills in the emptiness with pitch-perfect voice and tone. For book groups, the topic of mental illness can be looked at through the lens of ROSIE COLORED GLASSES.