AustLit

Mayers is interested in examining the symbiotic relationship between realism and fantasy, which she sees as a 'hybrid twinning of two constructs' rather than two discrete and opposing genres (18). Setting up a comparative reading between Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began and Carmody's Greylands, Mayers contends that Marsden's novel, 'conflates future and past tense' in ways that locate it in the realm of 'speculative fantasy' despite the narrative's dicourse which situates events as 'close to reality' (19). The result is a narrative which according to Mayers, 'negates any solid compatibilty between the two genres [fantasy / realism] and privileges their binary opposition' in ways that manipulate the reader to accept the homogonenized adolescent narrative voice as a reflection of 'real' adolescence experience in contemporary society (20-21). On the other hand, she reads Carmody's novel as one that deftly intergrates the two genres by blurring the boundaries between fantasy and realism in a narrative that 'shifts comfortably between incident and imagination' and enables readers to 'make connections between their experience of dreams and of reality' (21).