In line with Almond’s personal experiences with the early loss of loved ones, many of Almond’s characters have experienced a loss – Mina in My Name is Mina, Slog in Slog’s Dad, the father and daughter in My Dad’s a Birdman, orphaned Stan in The Boy who Swam with Piranhas – or are facing a potential loss – Bobby in The Fire-Eaters and Michael in Skellig.
The unique ways in which the characters cope with their grief are highlighted not as stupid or outlandish, but as valid and acceptable, acknowledging that grieving is an individual process but one that can be alleviated via art, love, and belief.
The unique ways in which the characters cope with their grief are highlighted not as stupid or outlandish, but as valid and acceptable, acknowledging that grieving is an individual process but one that can be alleviated via art, love, and belief.
Dave McKean’s illustrations in Slog’s Dad depict the son’s expressions of grief: a single nighttime tear, the building of a balloon-headed, father-like scarecrow, and the scissoring of a paper doll’s legs to mimic the way in which the father died. And in the text’s narrative, Slog’s intense need to believe that the bloke is his father rings desperate and sad. |
In My Name is Mina, Mina goes into the dangerous construction site in her local park, convinced it is the portal to the underworld. In My Dad’s a Birdman, daughter Lizzie and father Jackie lapse into bird-like behavior – building in-the-house nests, eating bugs, designing wings and beaks – at the disapproval of an aunt.
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The Year of Magical Thinking
JOAN DIDION on grief and death, the extraordinary amid the ordinary
“It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy.”
"How could this have happened when everything was normal?”
"How could this have happened when everything was normal?”