REVIEW: “What a Name Does is Let You Leave” by Meagan Kane

Review of Meagan Kane, “What a Name Does is Let You Leave,” Adventitious no. 1 (Feb/Mar 2026): 55-69 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m very deeply not a fan of 2nd person POV; unfortunately, that dislike is compounded when the POV is that of someone who is so obviously not me that the cognitive incongruence of being continually told that it is me overwhelms everything else.

Which is a shame, because I think told in a different perspective, I might have really enjoyed this story. Instead, I enjoyed it more in spite of itself, rather than because of it. There was a beautiful depth of longing threading through all of it which kept me reading on.

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REVIEW: “Europan Culture (Seven Theses)” by Meagan Kane

Review of Meagan Kane, “Europan Culture (Seven Theses),” Flash Fiction Online 151 (April 2026): 28-31 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’m really not sure what I think about this story. Perhaps my cognitive dissonance comes from the title, which led me to think the story was going to be very different from how it was. But I also wonder if I would’ve liked the story even if it had a different title; there was just something unsettling about the way Conamara’s very being and existence was handle, by the unnamed narrator, or maybe by the author.

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