Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Book’s message confused by its packaging

by
September 1992, no. 144

A Long Way Home by Mary K. Pershall

Penguin, $14.95 pb

Book’s message confused by its packaging

by
September 1992, no. 144

Who does this book think it is? Fiction or autobiography, for teenagers or adults? Every book has an idea of its own identity, established by its author, editor, and publisher, and proclaimed through its cover, the style and form of the text, and the accompanying publicity. A Long Way Home seems to suffer from an identity crisis.

The author blurb advises us that it is a ‘novel for adults’ (as opposed to the author’s earlier work for children and teenagers). Not only that, it is a ‘work of autobiographical fiction’. Yet the cover suggests (through non-verbal signals) that this may be a book for teenagers: its soft watercolour illustration is strongly representational, in a style favoured for sub-adult books in the 1970s and 1980s. You can almost see the training wheels. Below the illustration, a line of text – ‘Where do you belong when your past is in another place?’ – offers another almost offensively clear signpost to guide the reader between the covers.

Sally Harper reviews 'A Long Way Home' by Mary K Pershall

A Long Way Home

by Mary K. Pershall

Penguin, $14.95 pb

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.