Stow was influenced by the focus on particular places in English Victorian literature and set the entire novel in Suffolk. Literary scholar Melanie Duckworth has claimed that, in "The Girl Green as Elderflower," Suffolk is not mere setting, but rather a textured and historied place. Although he kept the location static, the novel takes place over a variety of time periods. It focuses one place throughout and across time. Stow engages in what Duckworth calls "Australian medievalism," drawing connections between the Middle Ages and postcolonial Australia and Papua New Guinea. This connection is most clear between the medieval legend of green children and the novel's titular Welsh "girl green." Stow draws a parallel between greenness and strangeness in the medieval period to the aftermath of contemporary colonialprojects. Ultimately, according to Duckworth, it is trauma (both for the main character, Crispin Clare, and the colonial/postcolonial places he inhabits) that draws the narrative out of and across time. Destabilization of time is positioned as a means of recovery, particularly for Clare.