Review of Atalanti Evripidou, “We Are Island,” Luna Station Quarterly 60 (2024): 127-145 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I love it when I read a story where one character’s love for another is so palpable, so shining, that you see it from the very first page and you get swooped up in it. This is one of those stories. Elias’s love for Ren is dazzling, and so is Ren’s for Elias.
And yet, as brightly as is shines, it doesn’t eclipse the background world that Evripidou has deftly constructed through the introduction of one simple change: It’s a world very much like ours except that there are chips available which when implanted allow people access to their familial memories. Evripidou works out the consequences of this one idea in ways that enhance her characters. It’s such a deftly-balanced story; I was super impressed. (And I desperately would love to see it turned into an 8- or 12-episode TV series, if one can do that with such a short story!)
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