The basic story is about a girl, Green, who loses her family and everything she has ever cherished. She retreats into a world of pain and sorrow. She reacts to her loss by becoming Ash. Sewing thorns in her clothes and nails in her shoes she creates a pain that hides her inner pain. As she begins to tatoo her body with symbols of darkness, she reveals how dead she has become; she has turned to Ash.
At first glance, this book seems to be science fiction, other worldly. On further analysis, it becomes an allegory. Green represents all the good, fruitful, loving existence we all hope for. Ash has become pain, nothingness, death.
Everyone can certainly can understand loss. For some, they probably experience it everyday. Green retreats from her pain by creating more pain to herself with the thorns, nails and needles. She exposes the pain she is feeling through her tatoos.
However, Green returns to the "land of the living" through time and circumstance and others in need. Her salvation comes when she begins reaching out to others also in pain and suffering.
I think her evolution from the old Green to Ash to a new Green symbolizes the strength of the human spirit through hope.
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