REVIEW: “What You Sow” by Holly Schofield

Review of Holly Schofield, “What You Sow,” Small Wonders no. 11 (May 2024): 14-16 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I liked the conceit of the story — growing flowers and other plants from your head instead of hair — as there’s a lot of imaginative scope in it. (I spent quite a bit of time, while reading, idly wondering what flowers I’d grow.) And I loved the way an entire lifetime was traced in a scant few pages.

I just wish (personal opinion here!) that it weren’t told in second person.

(First publishing in Navigating Ruins 2022).

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REVIEW: “Up From Out of Clay” by Eris Young

Review of Eris Young, “Up From Out of Clay,” Small Wonders no. 11 (May 2024): 24-27 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’m not quite sure what I make of this story. It’s about a girl and a golem, about a master and his apprentice, and I feel like there is more to it than this, but two readings through didn’t quite reveal what that more is.

Perhaps other readers will resonate more with the story than I did.

(First published in Gwylion 3, 2021).

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REVIEW: “Swan’s Song” by Colleen Anderson

Review of Colleen Anderson, “Swan’s Song,” Small Wonders no. 11 (May 2024): 32-33 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“What is love?” this poem’s opening line asks us, and if there’s an answer in the lines that following, it’s what love isn’t. While not quite as gruesome as the original fairy tale that serves as this poem’s inspiration, the undertones of violence and pain remain.

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REVIEW: “Unbending My Bones” by Sierra Branham

Review of Sierra Branham, “Unbending My Bones,” Small Wonders no. 11 (May 2024): 28-30 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story wears its allegory with unabashed pride: You can tell every step of the way that it is an allegory, and what it’s an allegory for, but the power of it never descends into browbeating the reader. Deftly done, this story will resonate with anyone who has ever gotten trapped inside insidious organized religion.

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REVIEW: “All the Dead Girls, Singing,” by Avra Margariti

Review of Avra Margariti, “All the Dead Girls, Singing,” Small Wonders no. 7 (January 2024): 31-33 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Violence against women.

The story of Fairview, whose dead girls congregate by the edge of the lake, is raw and harsh and rough. On the one hand, it’s superficially a ghost story. On the other hand, it’s definitely not that, it’s a story of violence against women, and about the men who perpetrate it.

Read with care/caution.

(First published in Coppice and Brake 2020.)

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