Review of Rae Maybee, “Lost Souls,” Luna Station Quarterly 57 (2024): 240-245 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There was something about this story that really took me, sucked me in and made me love it, even though a lot of its external trappings are things I don’t ordinarily like. Maybe it was the combination of 2nd person with the subjunctive — instead of the narrator telling me how I do feel, they told me how I might feel — if only I did the right things, went the right places, asked the right questions. So this story allowed me to inhabit a “what if,” which is, honestly, what we want our stories to do.
It was short, it offered me a few minutes escapism, and it delivered on that — equal parts fairy tale and a tale of how we’d want people to respond in the actual world. All in all, it was really good stuff.
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