The tone of these stories is not unlike that of Tan's The Lost Thing (2000), in which most people - particularly adults - refuse to acknowledge the inexplicable, leaving the reader feeling a kind of bemused pleasure the story's absurdity is amusing but also thought-provoking. Here, you can expect the unexpected and know there's something unusual just below the mundane surface, if you'd just care to look.
Of course, it wouldn't be Shaun Tan without a twist of surrealism, which shifts suburbia from the usually dull setting to a mysterious, somewhat "other-worldly" place. The book includes 15 short stories, each based - to varying degrees - on Tan's experience growing up in the burbs (Hillarys, in Perth's northern suburbs, to be precise).
0 kommentar(er)
