Abstract

Loon is a novel that investigates familial relationships within a framework of biblical parallels. Like many seventeen-year-olds, the narrator questions her identity and her role within society--which in this instance have been shaped by her mother's insistence that she is the Second Coming. Her mother's mental dysfunction and religious idolatry determine April's place in society and within her own family as a misfit, ultimately preventing a relationship between mother and daughter. Coloured by insanity and Christianity, Loon is about an adolescent attempting to establish her own identity beyond that which her mother has assigned her. In that sense, this novel investigates the familiar pattern of mother-daughter relationships through an ironic parallel with the Christian notion of God as the Father and God as the Son.