Review: The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon

The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon

Release Date: October 1st 2012
Publisher: Harry N. Adams
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 208
Source: Library
Author: Website | Goodreads
Buy it: Amazon | The Book Depository
Add it: Goodreads

Twenty-eight-year-old Nao Brown, who’s hafu (half Japanese, half English), is not well. She’s suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and fighting violent urges to harm other people. But that’s not who she really wants to be. Nao has dreams. She wants to quiet her unruly mind; she wants to get her design and illustration career off the ground; and she wants to find love, perfect love.

Nao’s life continues to seesaw. Her boyfriend dumps her; a toy deal falls through. But she also meets Gregory, an interesting washing-machine repairman, and Ray, an art teacher at the Buddhist Center. She begins to draw and meditate to ease her mind and open her heart—and in doing so comes to a big realization: Life isn’t black-and-white after all . . . it’s much more like brown.

I feel out of the norm rating this one as I did because it seems like everyone who read this absolutely loved it. I just didn’t though. To me, it was just an ok book. The artwork is good and the story is intriguing but I felt confused in some parts because it seemed a little jumpy. The ending happened way too quickly and I’m still not sure what exactly happened or who she ended up with.

Throughout the story there is a separate story intertwined. It is a rather strange one. It involves a boy and his family. The family gets turned into a tree and the boy gets turned into a half boy, half tree and he had to break the curse by finding someone to fall in love with him and marry him. I’m not sure why this story was thrown in but it was an interesting one for sure.

Anyway, The main story is about a young lady named Nao Brown (pronounced Now). Nao has a pretty severe case of OCD and is trying to live out a normal life. Her OCD however is to picture ways she could kill people and then rating them on a scale from 1 to 10. When she gets a job with an old friend she happens to meet a washing machine repair man who she absolutely must date. The story evolves from there. There was definitely a wobbly ending (as I mentioned before).

My favorite parts of the story (as morbid as this may sound) were the parts that involved her OCD. They seemed to come out of the blue and were rather graphic. They were the most intense parts of the story. Any of the parts were drawn in red, which is Nao’s favorite color. She usually wears something read and even the pages of the book are red.

Overall the book was fine but I wasn’t overly impressed with it. I still recommend checking it out though. 

My Rating: