This is a collection of short stories that focus on women and the things they have to go through and live with on a daily basis. I loved the variety of women in these stories, it lens itself to the universal feeling of womanhood and what women deal with. These stories are complex and emotional and you will be happy to read them off until the end.

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.

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 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.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

Once removed is a collection of short stories addressing intimacy, women and life.
As with most collections, there were some stories that didn't hold my interest and some that were amazing.

This collection of short stories made me think about life. The stories highlighted people across the spectrum of life and their individual fears and how small the world is. I'm typically not into collection of short stories, but the summary of this collection piqued my interest. Throughout the collection, we meet characters who find ways into each others' lives. Thanks to Netgalley and University of Georgia Press for my free copy in exchange for an honest review.

A thought provoking collection of stories about women and the struggle to keep it all in. Sadness, loneliness, grief, pain. It's all there.

It's about family. It's about women. It's powerful story-telling that is well deserving all of the praise.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thank you to University of Georgia Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This collection of stories sneaks up on you and pulls you in., quietly and steadily. The stories are connected, which gives an extra edge when your mind catches up and realizes that you are seeing things from a different angle than before. The author writes truly beautiful prose about heavy issues, sometimes filled with grief, sometimes with small joys. Families in all their permutations, relationships and their lack, coping with the difficulties that fate deals you - heavy, but written with such a light hand.

Highly recommended!

'But it was exhilarating to be fearful, to feel something other than an endless cycle of impatience, hope, grief, rage.'

Once Removed is a collection filled with moments in our lives that threaten to spill over, overwhelmed with quiet suffering, desperate need to clutch at what is falling away. Sometimes the ugly, means things we think get exposed here, but full of raw honesty. In Bandit, Hannah finds it easier to form an intimacy with a young boarder named Rune than face the desperate hope and need on her husband’s face after a stunning loss. Sometimes it’s easier to reach for strangers when what needs to be faced is a pain like swallowing glass, our shared tragedies pushing us apart. How do we just ‘move on’, there is no timeline to healing.

In Daredevil, Grace is a sad mother trying to build a new life coming out of the storm of a broken home, fractured family. Her yearning to bond with her son, wounded and fragile is upended all the more by a sickly little girl named Noreen, whom she teaches along with her son in Sunday school. “Forgive me, Grace prayed sometimes after receiving Communion, forgive me for being thankful she’s not mine.” All Grace wants is to lift she and her son out of this pit, this pain of ‘a family in ruins’, a shame she can’t repair the landscape of her own home but she tries, lord knows she tries. Why is her eight year old son always trying to get away from her? Why is he accepting dares, doing things that are always to his own detriment, turning away from her boundless love for him? Why can’t she protect him?

These are families with insurmountable distances between them, favorites who have jumped ship and left the least admired child behind to keep parents afloat, as in Jump. The pain of comparison that is born within families, the terror of one day creating your own family, always armed to defend oneself because no one else ever has your back. Could you, dare you attempt motherhood? Carrying the dead-horse of your own childhood, fearful you just don’t have it in you to be any good at parenting. Marney juggles the viciousness of jealousy, betrayal and need for her family to be intact, but her needs are never considered. How do you chose one over another, seems her mother certainly always chose her brother Winston first. Winston who has gone away, who holds his grudge tight. Marney’s love life isn’t any easier, as she butts heads with her boyfriend’s mother, relationships feel like a continuation of one’s own family saga. How is it some escape the madhouse and others are entrapped by it?

The stories are connected and when I got to Once Removed, it was a gut punch. How did we get here, something I think a lot of us ask about the awful moments we encounter in our lives? We try to be better people than we are, wedging ourselves into stories that were playing out before we stepped in, because everyone is anchored somewhere we are an uninvited, unwelcome guest. The push of wanting to heal what life breaks, the ache and sacrifice of parenting, the strange little families we must make in lieu of tragedy. Once Removed was a lump in my throat, being afraid when challenged, longing for things that seem forever outside the boundaries of your current reality, the cruelty of fate. Too, the silence we hold just to keep our family intact, the unsaid always a bigger fissure than what we explain.

What a collection! Families, how do we survive them? How do we survive without them? Hope that feels like disease, hope demands so much of us. Mothers and daughters, the push and pull of resentment and love, loyalties and how we divide them, the ache of it. Colette Sartor is an author to watch, she writes beautifully about the intricacies of relationships, imperfect situations and everything that follows the impact of tragedies. Yes, read this collection.

Publication Date: September 15, 2019

University of Georgia Press

I actually enjoyed Once Removed. The stories were good and I felt a connection to the characters. Thought -provoking. I would recommend this one.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy for review.