Glancing down I can see not everyone loved this. One review complained about how Green's sister is described as made of "laughter and moonlight." But after all, it was quite obvious to me very early on this is a fairy tale. One set in a near future contemporary world, yes, and told by Green herself, who has become "Ash." A 15 year old girl who after she loses her family in an apocalypse tattoos herself with images of vines and bats, studs her boots with nails and her scarf with thorns. She attracts to herself a greyhound she names "Ghost," sparrows and a hawk and a boy she calls Diamond.
The language is very spare and stark--even primal in its imagery. The tale is very short, I doubt it's above 20,000 words. And even though it's in the language of the "Once Upon a Time" fairy tale it also spoke to me very much as a tale of 9/11. This was published back in 2003, and the silver city across a river sounded a lot like New York City to me. Of the apocalypse, Green says that "People who were close by said they could see people jumping from the buildings, like silver birds, like bright diamonds." Later she says she heard people saying that "the people who had destroyed the city...had been living among us pretending to be good neighbors." So when Hoffman talked of grief and slow renewal, I did feel she was talking to me.
