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Review: Restless Town
Jan. 12th, 2023 11:16 amRestless Town is a collection of furry short stories by Madison Scott-Clary. Disclaimer: I support her on Patreon.
Scott-Clary writes with delicacy and understanding, drawing on both personal experience and the experience of others. The stories, populated by kind people, explore anxiety, grief, compulsion, despair and renewal. They survey a period of life when youth is gone and true maturity not yet attained, a period particularly vulnerable to despair. Here despair loses.
Amateur writing lacks sufficient boundary between characters and author. This isn't a matter of self-absorption so much as it is inexperience on the author's part when situating themself among their characters. Scott-Clary grants her characters an autonomy that many famous authors cannot, enabling these characters to take up a presence in the reader's mind.
Scattered thoughts on most of the individual stories.
A Theory of Attachment: A woman suffering from anxiety and compulsion negotiates the introduction of a new companion into an existing relationship, with both romantic and sexual ramifications. She is depicted with empathy: the story does not focus on the compulsions in preference to the compelled, which depictions of OCD tend to do. I feel I am an incrementally more empathetic person for having read this.
Centerpiece: Skipped due to squick.
Overclassification: A folklorist becomes the protagonist of a story that really should have a number.
You're Gone: A husband grieves for his lost wife by continuing to text in their private chat. Developments are communicated with economy, and a premise that could have been self-indulgent is instead an effective vehicle for the story. Mainly I'm happy that epistolary stories are still a thing.
The Fool: I disliked this story for two personal reasons: a general distaste for Tarot, and a dislike for the noncommittal, redirecting style of therapy used by the Tarot reader.
What Defines Us: An email exchange leads to revelations about past trauma. This story sounds drawn from personal experience. There is catharsis here, but it faces away from the reader. (That is not a bad thing.)
Disappearance: The fantasy of torching one's life and starting anew is often a sublimated suicide fantasy. This fantasy gives Sawtooth a tone of an afterlife, complete with understated angelic figures to offer employment and meaning, and an old friend transfigured.
Scott-Clary writes with delicacy and understanding, drawing on both personal experience and the experience of others. The stories, populated by kind people, explore anxiety, grief, compulsion, despair and renewal. They survey a period of life when youth is gone and true maturity not yet attained, a period particularly vulnerable to despair. Here despair loses.
Amateur writing lacks sufficient boundary between characters and author. This isn't a matter of self-absorption so much as it is inexperience on the author's part when situating themself among their characters. Scott-Clary grants her characters an autonomy that many famous authors cannot, enabling these characters to take up a presence in the reader's mind.
Scattered thoughts on most of the individual stories.
A Theory of Attachment: A woman suffering from anxiety and compulsion negotiates the introduction of a new companion into an existing relationship, with both romantic and sexual ramifications. She is depicted with empathy: the story does not focus on the compulsions in preference to the compelled, which depictions of OCD tend to do. I feel I am an incrementally more empathetic person for having read this.
Centerpiece: Skipped due to squick.
Overclassification: A folklorist becomes the protagonist of a story that really should have a number.
You're Gone: A husband grieves for his lost wife by continuing to text in their private chat. Developments are communicated with economy, and a premise that could have been self-indulgent is instead an effective vehicle for the story. Mainly I'm happy that epistolary stories are still a thing.
The Fool: I disliked this story for two personal reasons: a general distaste for Tarot, and a dislike for the noncommittal, redirecting style of therapy used by the Tarot reader.
What Defines Us: An email exchange leads to revelations about past trauma. This story sounds drawn from personal experience. There is catharsis here, but it faces away from the reader. (That is not a bad thing.)
Disappearance: The fantasy of torching one's life and starting anew is often a sublimated suicide fantasy. This fantasy gives Sawtooth a tone of an afterlife, complete with understated angelic figures to offer employment and meaning, and an old friend transfigured.
