Date of Award

Spring 2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

Program/Concentration

Creative Writing

Committee Director

Janet Peery

Committee Member

Sheri A. Reynolds

Committee Member

Jeffrey Richards

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E64 B43 2008

Abstract

A Night in Neverland is a collection of five short stories. Each story touches on illusion, fantasy, magical thinking, beauty and unhinged reality, and transformation. Also at the center of this collection is estrangement and identity, and the clash between.

In "A Night in Neverland," a high-school girl creates her own fantastic prom memories despite the dismal realities of the evening, "Somewhere Bright and Clear" follows another teenage girl and three of her friends, during a stolen weekend at her family's lake house, where she's promised her boyfriend something she never wanted to deliver. In "Wonderful, Wonderful" a woman breaks her own dating boundaries, then tries to redeem her self-concept with the perfect home-cooked meal. "Smoke" follows a young woman's growing infatuation with her sister's husband as a result of her disillusionment with available men, and "Dryden River" examines a woman's fabrication of a correlation between a town's tragedy and her own accident there. These five stories follow an arc of fantasy created by their protagonists, from innocent to severe, from creation of magic to reclaiming of self.

Told in both first and third person narration, these stories feature characters who want to believe in the power of their own illusions; they use magical thinking as a means of survival.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/5eyh-y130

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