Truth Needs No Colour   

Heather McQuillan    

 

 

Truth Needs No Colour 
Heather McQuillan
Cloud Ink Press
Novel, Paperback, 303 pages
ISBN 978 1 7385943 6 8

‘We know exactly who you are,’ the warden said. ‘We’ll be watching you.’

 

It is Mariana’s fifteenth birthday and the first day of her Year 11 course at her new college. A keen artist, Mariana will be in the Artisan Grade at the Apace Senior College, run by the Carapace Corporation. The ‘tipping point’ of climate change has arrived. The devastated South Island has been declared ‘financially unviable’ and is now run by the Carapace Corporation.

 

 Home-schooled, Mariana is surprised by the rigidity of her new school where the lessons are computerised indoctrination. The Civics class motto is ‘Your Civic Responsibility: Control, Obedience, Gratitude.’ An art lesson is mainly colouring-in, and Mariana gets low marks because of ‘unacceptable colour selection.’  Lunch includes Carapace Foodstuffs’ Hexa-Fuel Protein Bars – made from insects. There is a 3-minute limit on toilet visits and her counsellor carries a stun-gun. Not only are the students under constant surveillance; their teachers are too.

Mariana is in trouble from her first moment at school; she is fined because her red dress is not a Carapace-made garment. Carapace has re-introduced debtors’ prisons which double as sweated-labour workshops. Under Carapace, there are strong social divisions. Christchurch has been abandoned and the entitled well-off live in the newly-constructed Te Tahi city.

Mariana, however, lives with her grandparents in the shanty-town of Deans Village not far from the overgrown remains of the botanic gardens. Grandma Isla sews clothes and quilts, while Grandpa Jack is a caretaker. The black market operating from the former Cricket Oval enables them to scratch a living.

 Mariana narrates her own story and the reader quickly realises that she comes from a family with secrets. Her childhood memories gradually build up a picture of her parents as leaders in protesting against Carapace, but her mother was murdered and her father had to flee to Australia. Her grandparents are annoyingly tight-lipped about the turbulent past so Mariana is frustrated and resentful.  Her attention is caught by a bright fellow-student, Filiki, and the pair gradually come to a prickly understanding before events tear them apart.

 There are moments of grim humour. All students’ art work is copyrighted to Carapace, so Mariana finds one of her designs on the cover of a glossy magazine. She gets no acknowledgement. ‘And I’d only got 3/10 for it.’ The college promises that ‘everyone gets treated the same’ but uses this rule to deny aid to those in need of it. For Tulia, a student crippled by rickets, this means she is not allowed to use her wheel-chair in school. When Filiki is caught piggybacking her to a Maths class, he is fined. Is Filiki going to become trapped in the corporation’s ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline?

 

Mariana faces her own challenges with the authorities. She finds that her determination to tell the truth may bring harm to her grandparents and threaten her own future. Then, Grandfather Jack breaks his silence and Mariana faces a terrible dilemma.

 

This highly readable novel has a large cast of interesting characters from a range of backgrounds. The plot moves at Mariana’s lively pace from simple classroom events to a major social upheaval.

 

Truth Needs No Colour can be read as a grim but readable action thriller as well as an unusual teenage romance. Young adult readers will, however, be smart enough to see it, also, as a dark warning about present trends in our society. This is a story which will make young readers think.

 Trevor Agnew 
14 March 2025     [Review 3742]

 

 

 

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:

McQUILLAN, Heather

New Zealand writer, teacher

Heather McQuillan is an award-winning writer, who was born in Kent, England but now lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch, New Zealand. As well as writing for young people she writes short fiction, flash fiction and poetry and has been widely published in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. 

She has a Master of Creative Writing with distinction from Massey University and her thesis collection of short stories was published in the United Kingdom as Where Oceans Meet and other stories, Reflex Press, 2019. Many of these stories are ‘flash fiction’ defined as ‘a story between six and a thousand words.’

Heather says of her career, ‘For a long time I was a teacher who wrote. Now I am a writer who teaches. The two roles keep getting tangled.’

In 2005 she won the Tom Fitzgibbon Award and three of her novels for young people so far have been awarded Storylines Notable Books awards. Her previous novels for young readers are:

 Mind Over Matter, Scholastic NZ, 2006
Nest of Lies, Scholastic NZ, 2011
Avis and the Promise of Dragons, Cuba Press, 2019
Avis and the Call of the Kraken, Cuba Press, 2024
Truth Has No Colour, Cloud Ink Press, 2025

Heather is the director of the Write On School for Young Writers, where she works to give agency to young writers.

Heather lives with her teacher husband and their two boys in Sumner, Christchurch, where her writing loft in the roof of the family home gives her wide open views of the hills and sea. ‘It’s a small space but it’s a gorgeous space.’

 Heather McQuillan's Awards:

Tom Fitzgibbon Award (2005) Mind Over Matter

Storylines Notable Books Award (2006) Mind Over Matter

Storylines Notable Books Award (2012) Nest of Lies

Storylines Notable Books Award (2020) Avis and the Promise of Dragons

Otago University College of Education/ Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence (2021)

 

Website: https://www.heathermcquillanwriter.com/