Blackburn's first novel, the book was praised by critics and shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

[2][non-primary source needed] The narrative begins with a missionary on a 19th-century island in the Indian Ocean.

Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called the book "a dense, poetic tale of a family's inheritance.

[1] Publishers Weekly offered a mixed review, describing the novel's central question as "dishearteningly rhetorical".

[4] The Book of Colour was shortlisted for the inaugural Women's Prize for Fiction in 1996.