SuitabookGreen angel
Alice Hoffman
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the young person rather than rushing through the bleak sections. Pause after Green's encounters with others, and discuss whether the imagery feels comforting, frightening or difficult to interpret.
- Themes
- Grief and recovery: Green loses her family, withdraws into an altered identity and gradually reconnects with other people, living things and her own story. Care, friendship and persistence are presented as meaningful parts of recovery, while grief remains substantial rather than quickly solved.
- Identity and self-erasure: Green renames herself Ash, changes her appearance and covers herself with dark tattoos while trying to distance herself from her former self. The transformation is shown as an expression of pain and attempted self-erasure, but also becomes part of a symbolic movement towards recognising herself again.
- Care after catastrophe: Although Green initially lives apart from others, she cares for injured animals, an elderly neighbour, a garden and Diamond, another orphaned young person. The story gives practical care and mutual help a central place in survival, while not suggesting that these relationships erase loss.
- Worth knowing
- Be prepared for intense material: a catastrophic fire, deaths, physical injury, severe grief, isolation, self-tattooing and a disturbing account of another teenager's decline and disappearance.