REVIEW: “The Growing Song” by Heather Pagano

Review of Heather Pagano, “The Growing Song,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 147-173 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The Growing Song that Anila’s choir sings is one that urges the Dawlee sprouts to grow, to rise up from the base of the Atlantic ocean according to a careful blueprint that will eventually provide sustainable housing. This is a story of how aliens fleeing the destruction of their own planet landed on earth unknowingly bringing with them the saviour of our planet. In that respect, the story starts off feeling very much like fiction — the idea that we could welcome immigrant, refugee aliens rather than destroy them seems far away from our current reality. But sometimes it’s good to read stories about how we would like humanity to be, rather than how it is! And as it goes on, humanity-as-we-know-it reasserts itself in all sorts of recognizable and disappointing ways — but also in ways which actually make it hard for me to sympathise with alien-Anila, rather than her human-husband Thomas. A lot of ambivalence in this story!