One Last Month, or Clancy's Time-Box

Authors

Safiyya BintaliFollow

Document Type

Creative Work

Publication Date

2023

Abstract

One Last Month is a young adult (YA) novella of roughly forty-three thousand words aimed at readers in middle school and in early high school grades. Structurally, it is an “ensemble Bildungsroman”, wherein all the main characters—rather than just one—embark on journeys of emotional growth and are given significant plot focus. Through the characters, One Last Month focuses on the importance and influence of non-romantic love, specifically through homosocial relationships between the novella’s male characters. It also touches on the process of grief beyond the Kübler-Ross structure and, though more subtly, emotional expression in young men. Through one of the most pertinent plot themes, grief, a fantastical element is applied to better exaggerate the process thereof, and the backdrop of fantasy also serves as a vessel for the novella’s chapter structure. The novella’s chapter perspective switches between four characters and two chapter “styles”—storyline progression and revelational—that serve to illustrate both the past and the present. The overall purpose of the novella is to provide greater representation of healthy homosocial relationships in YA literature, thereby increasing positive representation for male readers of YA literature, as well as paint emotions in a more positive light for young readers by representing them as influential strengths rather than hindering weaknesses. From a creative standpoint, it explores story form in the YA genre with interweaving narratives, multiple points of view, and a chronologically nonlinear storyline presentation.

Keywords

Fantasy; Bildungsroman; Young Adult; Novella; History; Grief; Friendship; Mystery; Brothers; Adventure

Disciplines

Children's and Young Adult Literature | Fiction | Literature in English, North America | Modern Literature | Secondary Education

File Format

pdf

File Size

289 KB

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Repository Citation

Bintali, S. (2023). One Last Month, or Clancy's Time-Box.
Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/award/63