Libraries
-Magic for Beginners
-The Faerie Handbag
-The Surfer
Snakes
-The Wizards of Perfil
-The Specialist's Hat
-The Surfer?
-The Wrong Grave (indirectly)
Relocating - moving to a new place/finding home
- The Wizards of Perfil
-Magic for Beginners
-The Faerie Handbag
-The Specialist's Hat
-The Surfer
-The Constable of Abal
-Pretty Monsters
Death
-The Wrong Grave
-The Wizards of Perfil
-Magic for Beginners
-The Farie Handbag
-The Specialist's Hat
-The Surfer
-The Constable of Abal
-Pretty Monsters
I agree with everything you wrote but I just wanted to comment on the moving to a new location recurring idea. I feel that moving to a new location allows for anything to happen. It puts the main character into an unfamiliar setting with unfamiliar people. I believe that this is a key part in Kelly Link's stories because it sets the tone for the reader and allows the reader to begin the story with a fresh mindset. It allows the reader to begin to accept, if only in the story, the ideas that she presents.
ReplyDeleteWell said. I totally agree! Maybe a a better division would have been "removal from the character's normal setting" as opposed to "the unusual being introduced into the character's world"
ReplyDeleteGoing back and looking at Link's stories, another possible theme of parent's lacking involvement or bond with their children seems prevalent as well.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I phrased that right, but in most of the stories the children are always the main character and their relationships with their parents or older guardians always appear either shallow, distant, or nonexistent.
This is evident in such stories like Magic for Beginners with Germ and his family, with Dorn and his father in Surfer, with the two twin girls and their father in The Specialist's Hat, with Onion and Halsa and their guardians in Wizards of Perfil, etc. To me, every story appears this way.