How It Is to Be a Girl: A Review of Sarah Freligh’s A Brief Natural History of Women by Allison Renner
A Brief Natural History of Women
By Sarah Freligh
Small Harbor Publishing (2023)
55 pages
“You Come Here Often / And often alone” but you won’t feel that way after diving into the first story in Sarah Freligh’s collection A Brief Natural History of Women. These twenty-three pieces examine women’s lives through their relationships with men, mothers, friends, children, and alcohol. You may be a singular reader but the “we” of characters addressing everyday issues like lipstick, kissing, reputation, and pregnancy welcomes and understands flawed, realistic people in ways society often overlooks.
With many stories framed as “brief natural” histories, this book explores women’s love, loss, pain, and desire. You’ll read about specific women, but you’ll feel like you’re reading about all the women you know. Whether it’s “That Girl,” “The Other Woman,” or one of “the Girls in the Office,” the stories walk the line between being specific and individual while allowing readers to see themselves in each piece.
The settings include a sex-ed classroom, the workplace, bars, and AA meetings—the places where people are just vulnerable enough to form unexpected bonds. And you’ll bond with the women in these stories as they share their innermost experiences. Some are mourning lost children, others are missing dead brothers. A few are on one side or the other of an affair, listening to the phone call made to check in with the wife or leaving that cheater behind, not walking away, “but toward something you sense is there.” One woman is on the road, on the run, “somewhere in Arizona,” but she can’t leave her grief behind.
Instead of feeling alone in their struggles, there’s a sense of everywoman that makes you see them as people you know and love. This book addresses “How it feels to be fizzed-up, a bottle of rage waiting for an occasion to uncork and unload.” But it also uses a delicate touch to define “The Thing With Feathers.”
The women’s stories end on the page, sometimes after an incredibly brief exploration, but live on in your mind.
Allison Renner’s fiction and photography have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Ellipsis Zine, Six Sentences, Rejection Letters, Atlas and Alice, Misery Tourism, Versification, FERAL, and vulnerary magazine. Her chapbook Won’t Be By Your Side is out from Alien Buddha Press. She can be found online at allisonrennerwrites.com and on Twitter @AllisonRWrites.