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More nonlinear

From: lhendr at unm.edu <lhendr>
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 17:51:45 -0700 (MST)

Although, I guess we are supposed to be finished with this topic, it just occurred to me that in addition to _Red Shift_, books by two other English writers seem extremely unusual in their unfolding. One is Aidan Chambers N.I.K. (Now I Know). I'm not sure whether it jumps around in time, but it certainly jumps back and forth from diaries to letters, to tape recordings, to film scenarios -- a veritable collage of techniques. According to the jacket flap, "Aidan Chambers weaves these three simultaneous plots--presented through a combinatin of prose and poetry, journal entries, letters, jotted notes, flashbacks, and puzzles--into a provocative novel of mystery and self-discovery." I haven't read Chambers's _Breaktime_, but I think it does something similar. A reviewer said the story is told in a way that reflects the disorder in the main character's mind -- something that also seems to be happening in Red Shift.

The second book, which at least at the beginning, reads as though there is little unusual about the telling, although the reader may keep wondering just who the people are in the second set of chapters and how they are related to the characters in the first set, is Jill Paton Walsh's
_Unleaving_. What is the relationship between past and present in this book?

Linnea

Linnea Hendrickson Albuquerque, New Mexico Children's Literature: A Guide to the Criticism (1987) at: http://www.unm.edu/~lhendr Lhendr at unm.edu
Received on Sun 01 Nov 1998 06:51:45 PM CST