REVIEW: “Cloth Mother” by Sarah Pauling

Review of Sarah Pauling, “Cloth Mother”, Luna Station Quarterly 41 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Wow, what a story. It started off so simply: the young girl Mazie asks Vita, her caretaker, for a turtle. A small and simple request.

When it started off, I sort of hated the cloth mother and the way she lived in an uncanny valley. By the end of the story, the cloth mother made me cry. This was a powerful, compelling story.

(First published in Strange Horizons 2015).