Call Me Emma is ultimately a story about identity, both who we choose to be and who the world will supposedly accept. It’s one of those apparently universal parts of growing up, but here, it’s more obvious than most.
Category Archives: Reviews
‘Bat Eater’ Brings New Fears to Pandemic Lockdown
Bat Eater is a marvelous friendship bracelet of plot threads that sometimes take turns and sometimes work in tandem but are always engrossing, and all feel like facets of a terrifying and claustrophobic world.
‘Perspective(s)’ Gives Gossip Without the Guilt
The epistolary nature of Perspective(s), along with the framing of the letters as centuries-old discoveries, blunt the unfolding of the unhappier plot elements, letting us sit back and relish the political intrigue.
‘Birth Canal’ a Kaleidoscopic View of Obsession, Trauma
The most fascinating thing with Birth Canal as a whole is its dizzying range of vibes that can be pulled out of a narrow cast of characters in a handful of places and only a couple of eras in history.
‘Heartwood’ Explores Questions Behind Headline
This is not a story of tricky plot devices and big reveals. Instead, it’s a portrait of a search for a missing person, and how it takes a community of professionals and amateurs, friends and strangers, to locate them.
‘Antidote’ Offers Dreamlike Path to Cure for Hard Times
As The Antidote reminds us, there’s no understanding a place, or its people, if there is no reconciliation with the most difficult parts of that person or place.
‘Grief’ a Multifaceted Examination of Sorrow
Crosley’s writing brings the events, and her emotions, to life, and helps make her every action and reaction reasonable, even, and especially, when she knows they’re not. It is that prose-level finesse, not the subject matter, that helps keep this slim volume feeling relevant even when it occasionally strays into self-indulgence.
The Apocalypse Grows Strangely in ‘The Garden’
The Garden is as much about the testing, and mending, of a sisterly relationship as anything else. The apocalypse is merely a reason for their cloistering, and the reckoning they face with each other.
‘First Love’ Considers Friendship in its Many Forms
While her takes on friendship may come from places of personal specificity, they nonetheless find broad resonance in how I think most of us have thought of friendship, even if unconsciously.
‘Beijing’ May Sprawl, but the Stakes are Personal
The stories within Beijing Sprawl aren’t cozy or happy, necessarily, but they feel like they capture a moment of life that will become nostalgic, and that growing nostalgia bleeds through the page.
Ring Reads 