Novella: You Have the Prettiest Mask

You Have the Prettiest Mask, by Sarah Langan

In Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 42, published apparently on November 17th, 2020; also excerpted on LitHub

38 and 2/3 pages in LCRW, no clue how many words

(Big spoilers.) You kind of have to root for Cathy to do it at the end. It’s irrational, irresponsible, but you can’t help it! There’s no one left but her! And I love the way she articulates the choice before her. You can’t win the war of your own tiny personality against the rest of the world, but you can win a battle. And so she does. So she does. Like Rich Horton of Locus, I’m not sure if this is “a timely story or a weirdly untimely story”! The novella’s world’s response to the pandemic isn’t much like our world’s response, except when it is.

Novelette: “The Faery Handbag”

“The Faery Handbag,” by Kelly Link

Originally published in the anthology The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm (Mythic Fiction #2) (2004, edited by Helen Datlow and Terri Windling), which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology in 2005; posted here on the Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet website; collected in Magic for Beginners

8,088 words

This story reminded me strongly of “You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit”—the conversational tone, like somebody recounting the really weird day they just had, a tone that seems to facilitate the blurring of reality and fantasy.

Short story: “You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit”

“You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit,” by Jessy Randall

Appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (subscribe), Issue 31, December 2014

Roughly four pages in this zine, ? words

A fast-moving, clever piece that ends on a wonderfully unsettling note: “She was going to be so rich that she’d be able to buy any emotion she wanted, any time she wanted it.”

Early on in the story, the verb “to say” is invariably replaced by “to be like,” and quotation marks are never used for dialogue. On a reread, I noticed that this convention gets dropped halfway through. Disappointing. Maybe it was just there to underline the characters’ lack of communication? It’s true that the dialogue towards the end is more effective for being spelled out verbatim.