Larchfield is a beautiful story of the shock of new parenthood and the loneliness experienced by outsiders in small communities. A young poet, Dora Fielding, moves to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland. Newly married, pregnant, she’s excited by the prospect of a life that combines family and creativity. She thinks she knows what being a […]
speculative fiction
Review: The Ship, by Antonia Honeywell
Lalla has grown up sheltered from the chaos amid the ruins of civilization. But things are getting more dangerous outside. People are killing each other for husks of bread, and the police are detaining anyone without an identification card. On her sixteenth birthday, Lalla’s father decides it’s time to use their escape route–a ship he’s […]
Review: The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, by Meg Elison
As The Book of the Unnamed Midwife opens, a plague of fever has ravaged earth’s population, killing most of the men and almost all the women. There is no power, no gas and no water. Gangs of men roam the streets, looking for women to share and enslave. Babies are all born dead; most mothers […]