Magic

One of the biggest themes running throughout the whole book and most of Charles de Lint's published works is that of magic - the fantastical, the weird, wondrous, and terrifying. In the story of The Blue Girl this theme is portrayed explicitly through the disbelief and the experiences of one of the main protagonists, Imogene Yeck.

Imogene grew up in a Commune and so was used to talk of spaceships and crop circles and people who could turn into crows and ghosts, but had always regarded this as drug-induced and less practical then the realities of the harsh world that she dealt with everyday. This is the Imogene we meet at the start of the book, and is the Imogene who has to change through the course of the narrative. What we (and Imogene) discovers is that, as a small child she used to have an imaginary friend...