Individual Work
Blueberries

In Susan Gibb's hypertext fiction Blueberries, the reader has several encounters with "the strange little man." His appearance provokes a set of questions. Who is this man? Why is he strange and to what can we attribute his appearance? Gibb's masterful use of the link will slowly reveal where he fits and why he matters. The mystery of the strange little man is related to several other mysteries in this evocative fiction, which explores the nuances of blame, love, sexuality, and the effacement of language.

In Blueberries, links act as an augmenting grammar and as a means of relating observations on time, truth, and the relationships between artist, lover, mother and father. In this short fiction links provide a method of shaping coherence. The link "father" in Future, for example, in the context of a question, leads to reflection on the artist's father's death and how that death shapes language, providing the reader with a means of rethinking the significance of the artist's "ghosts," the "whiteness" of her experience, and why "reality is too ugly."

On one level Blueberries is a brutal evocation of the significance of trust. On another, it is wry and explores the link as a means of augmenting the element of surprise and coherence in fiction.

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