Rating: 
Summary: A great debut
Review: The focus of Neill and his family is his younger brother's battle with cancer, so his own inner conflict about his sexual orientation is set aside. Accompanying his brother to the clinic, Neill meets another patient named Vince who draws Neill into a complicated and unsettling romance that he hides from his family. Neill falls deeper into Vince's dark and self-destructive life where he learns about courage, love, and truth, and ultimately finds the strength to tell his own truths to his family. Healey's poetic storytelling beautifully illuminates the romance, but stumbles elsewhere in the novel, creating an uneven path through the story. Overall this is a notable fiction debut from a writer whose burgeoning potential is only glimpsed here.
Rating: 
Summary: brilliant
Review: This is book is so good that I can only assume that the nasty review posted here is a dispay of envy, madness, or personal vendetta. The last thing this book needs is an editor. It is a jewel -- intensely poetic, smart, and brave. I read it quickly and with utter enjoyment. Healey is an extraordinary writer.
Rating: 
Summary: A Multi-Faceted (slightly flawed) Gem
Review: This is not a love story. Nor do I think it was intended to be. It is, first and foremost, about the emotional growth of its narrator, Neill Cullane, a suburban youth confused about his sexuality and his role in his family. Although it might certainly, and rightfully, be viewed by the GLBT community as a "coming out" story, I think it is the latter theme, the exploration of family relationships, that ultimately distinguishes the book and makes it not only moving, but universal. Vince Malone, the charismatic, troubled street hood with whom Neill has his first sexual relationship, serves only as a vehicle through which Neill and the reader come to understand the intimate link between acceptance and love. Just as "Rain Man" is the story of Charlie Babbit, not his emotionally stunted brother Raymond, we know from the book's prophetic opening line that "Through it Came Bright Colors" is not a story of redemption for Vince. As with "Rain Man," the focus is on the character who has the ability to change and grow, Neill, and what his relationship with Vince teaches him about himself.
While Neill is exploring his burgeoning sexuality, his family appears, on the surface, to be coming unravelled. His "golden boy" younger brother Peter is undergoing a series of increasingly more disfiguring cancer surgeries and his parents are having difficulty coping. It is in the juxtaposition of the scenes of Neill's family (in present day and flashback) as they tentatively, awkwardly, knit together, with flashbacks to the nightmarish erosion of Vince's homelife that the book exhibits its major strength. Ultimately, Neill realises that the true pleasure of love is in the giving of it, not the receiving of it. When someone accepts your love, they also accept you. Individual scenes between Neill and each member of his family (including his macho older brother Paul, who, like Vince, pushes him away) tenderly, sometimes painfully, illustrate this.
At times the book has a bit of a cobbled together feel with some clumsy transitions between episodes in the Tenderloin with Vince, scenes of Neill's family life and the numerous flashbacks/reminiscences (with one particularly jarring shift of POV in a fairly short flashback sequence between Vince and a female psychologist that should have been either re-worked or expunged entirely). These things might easily have been remedied with the expansion of some sections (to smooth transitions) or perhaps by using a third person limited (as opposed to first person) narrative, but on the whole the book reads smoothly and coheres quite well. And these shortcomings are far outweighed by the carefully chosen language, rich with metaphor, and the overall emotional impact of story. I read this book several months ago and, I'll admit, the recent spate of reviews spurred me to contribute my opinion. All in all, I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful "Bright Colors"
Review: This story of 21-year-old Neill explores the tug between parental love & obligation versus one's own direction. It could be called a coming-out story, but it's much more than that. Not only is Neill dealing with the unraveling of his suburban family, he is still in the shadow of his golden-boy brother, Peter, who has multiple surgeries due to cancer. Neill's only release seems to be Vince, a druggie character who lives on the edge. These trysts seem to be his only relief in his world, which is chaos.
Eventually, Neill has to make a choice to allow his definition of himself to be known to all, regardless of the outcome. The fact that one can take the high road (which is hard) or the low road, which is the easy way out, is at the crux of this touching, interesting book.
Rating:
Summary: A Powerful Story About Love and Facing Real-life Issues
Review: Through It Came Bright Colors is truly a page-turner. Healey builds his characters and brings them to life so carefully and with such artistic prose, you feel like the characters are people you have come to know in your own life. A thought-provoking novel, Healey's story really portrays how familial love and romantic love can be so different yet so intertwined by who we are and how we open ourselves up to new people we encounter in our lives. A key theme in Healey's book is that we need to learn the value that trust can bring into our lives - the courage it gives us, the strength it gives us, the fortitude it gives us to continue to face new challenges. This book will relate to everyone - parents, siblings, young adults and older adults. I laughed a lot, I cried (and sobbed here and there) - I experienced this book cover to cover. Healey has shown us with his poetic prose how each of his characters becomes who they are, and how important it is to explore what drives us in our lives. After all, that's really what enables us to grow and learn how to love.
Rating:
Summary: A Clear Heart
Review: Trebor Healey's first novel affirms today's headlines: the suburbs make people sick. In following the story of a suburbanite aching to come out loving another young man, Healey uses the unlikely metaphor of illness as teacher. It's an absorbing read of real characters, contemporary issues, and writing that regularly shimmers. This is the kind of first novel that leaves you anticipating what will follow. Neil, his college drop-out protagonist, faces an illness more serious than even 'burb-induced obesity and depression. Though the latter secretly haunts him, it is the cancer diagnosis of his athlete younger brother that forces Neil to become anchor to a family drifting under the siege of a stricken adolescent. To cope with the smothering role of caregiver, Neil escapes his Northern California bedroom community for the Skid Row bedroom of Vince, a compelling, righteous survivor of both child abuse and a cancer battle of his own. With his alluring looks and "What Would Satan Do?" T-shirt, Vince helps Neil break down his inhibitions and express love. Problem is, Vince just can't accept it, let alone return it. Here's an oversimplification of the plot: Boy meets boy meets heroin. That's where the strength of this writing is at its best, for while cancer has a known cause and, in theory at least, a cure, serious drug addictions remain unfathomable and usually hopeless. Healey deftly portrays Neil's suburban naivete: that his abundant good will can stabilize Vince just as it stabilizes his stricken brother and suffering parents. The hard lesson is that his most powerful refrain, "That's what cancer taught me," is no match for the diagnosis of addiction. In fresh language, Healey shows how young people have to find their own way in the wilderness of love, especially gay love. His tour of the suburbs, though sketchy, is all that's necessary: the vague, dutiful parents, the formulaic schools, and the underlying dysfunction of the world of tract houses. His portrait of Neil as the good-humored closet case, second best even as an older brother, is so accurate it's painful to read. Descriptions of tumor recurrence, skin grafts, and night nurses will have a queasy familiarity to anyone who's stayed by a sickbed. Healey's writing comes even more alive in following his characters into San Francisco's gritty street life, and, briefly into the Sierras for a backpacking trip. His depth of detail makes each environment solid; perfect stages for his characters. There's something unusual about Healey's ability to retain and express the complexities of adolescent emotional development, especially through a gay lens. Even at their most authentically tortured, there's a clarity to the feelings this author conveys. Best of all, it's not for homos only; Through It Came Bright Colors should have a strong following among anyone who likes good, substantial writing. This book is tailor made for adolescent readers. Its honest and detailed affirmation of their tender and torrential emotions, as expressed by Neil and Vince, is rare to find in contemporary literature. Pity that in the age of Ashcroft, the salty language that helps make it so real might also keep it off the shelves of every high school library, where it would do a world of good. But that's merely a side observation. Healey's written a novel that's as profound in its substance as in the quality of its prose. For all of its raw heartbreak, I wanted to stay in that world for at least another hundred pages.
Rating:
Summary: The real deal
Review: Trebor Healey's Through It Came Bright Colors is the real deal: A debut novel that delivers honest, memorable characters and dazzling prose while telling a very straightforward and contemporary story. This isn't merely a gay man's coming-out story. To call it a coming-of-age novel would also be too easy. Healey leads us on a journey that explores such weighty themes as the purpose of love, familial relationships and what we're doing on the planet, but he does it all so casually that his reader isn't aware of the trip until he or she finishes the book and basks in that satisfied feeling that only comes from reading a good book. His characters and themes remind us that we're always coming of age, no matter when we were born.
Rating:
Summary: Layered read
Review: Trebor's prose reads easy. And you can also read it as poetry - slow, and out of order. The result is a book that gently moves you into understanding, like a book called 'Vedantic Tales' that I treasure for it's Aesop's Fables simplicity combined with Shankara's insight. I could not relate to any of the characters completely - too dysfunctional, timid, kind or repressive to be me, since I am neither Irish nor from the Tenderloin. But parts of me are and perhaps have been, and they were moved when they were discovered. I thank the author for writing this personal book. I'd read this book and also seek out Trebor's poetry if I were you.
Rating:
Summary: Colors of the Rainbow
Review: While the last reviewer said that all the reviews have been written by friends of Trebor, I will be honest. I met Trebor...once. But only after I read his book, I wrote him and was compelled to meet him. I liked the novel, no one said it was going to reinvent gay fiction, it's not trying to, it's just telling a story and that's all that really matters in the end. Trebor had the guts to tell his story, some of which is based on his life, in a very real and honest way. As I told Trebor, the story wouldn't have worked without either factor. If the family part was not there, the story would have been about a messed up relationship. If the relationship part was not there, it would have just been a story about a guy dealing with family tragedy (his brother's cancer)and trying to come out to his family. Together they created a perfect synergy of what it is like to be a gay man living two lives, trying to fulfill familial obligations while looking for an escape in someone who is dangerous enough to garner his attention while also being someone who cannot realistically build a future with because they are so self destructive and intent on ripping apart anything good that comes to them. Vince is a screwed up person who dealt with a very nasty childhood. The narrator is fairly innocent, he lived in the suburban dream, so it was only natural that he would be attracted to someone who was completely and utterly different from himself. The motivation of the character is believable. The parts with his brother are not overly sentimental or "Hallmark" in the least. I am looking forward to Trebor's next novel and hopefully getting together with him for coffee again someday ;).
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