Review: 'Once Removed: Stories' by Colette Sartor

I was taken in by the cover first, the facelessness of the woman on display, the ribbon from her dress looking like a leash holding her back. There is a nonchalance there, but there is also so much hiding there. I'm very glad to say that Sartor's stories work towards pulling back the curtain a little. Thanks to University of Georgia Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 9/15/2019
Publisher: University of Georgia Press

The women in the linked short story collection Once Removed carry the burdens imposed in the name of intimacy—the secrets kept, the lies told, the disputes initiated—as well as the joy that can still manage to triumph. A singer with a damaged voice and an assumed identity befriends a silent, troubled child; an infertile law professor covets a tenant’s daughterly affection; a new mother tries to shield her infant from her estranged mother’s surprise Easter visit; an aging shopkeeper hides her husband’s decline and a decades-old lie to keep her best friends from moving away.

With depth and an acute sense of the fragility of intimate connection, Colette Sartor creates stories of women that resonate with emotional complexity. Some of these women possess the fierce natures and long, vengeful memories of expert grudge holders. Others avoid conflict at every turn, or so they tell themselves. For all of them, grief lies at the core of love.

In Once Removed every story shows us a moment where a character is on a knife's edge. Sartor shows us her characters in the midst of potential chaos and, overwhelmed by choices they're making and the choices those around them make. All of the stories in Once Removed centre around women, so the pains and trials described in the stories are intrinsically linked to the moments, duties and pains we associate with women: motherhood, being a good sister, a better daughter, sacrifice, love, and of course, violence. Initially I worried this would hold the collection back, but Sartor does something fascinating with it. By gentle interlocking the stories, she emphasizes that we never know what is going on behind closed doors. Someone can be an antagonist in your life, but the wise guide in someone else's. No matter who they are to you, there is a hurt in their lives to. This doesn't excuse, but in the good moments it goes a long way to explaining.

Each of the stories in this collection has something to offer, but I do have my favourites that made me sit back and think. Daredevil digs into the darker side of motherhood, the shame of a broken home and the disconnect between a parent and child. Jump shows the bitterness between siblings, the deep love that created that bitterness and the inevitable loneliness when childhood ends. Lamb was one of my favourites as it dug into both postnatal depression as well as the intricacies of mother-daughter relationships. La Cuesta Encantada fell a little bit flat for me, showing a group of aging friends having to choose where and how the last part of their lives will take place, while confronting mistakes from the past. Overall, I liked Sartor's different stories, the spread of them as well as their focus on female emotions.

I give this collection...

4 Universes!

I really enjoyed Sartor's stories in Once Removed. They're beautifully interconnected and display the full range of emotions and situations that can make up a woman's life.