“All they wanted was sugar in the sun”: Allison Renner’s Review of How to Love a Black Hole by Rebecca Fishow
How to Love a Black Hole
by Rebecca Fishow
Conium Press (March 4, 2025)
88 pages
How to Love a Black Hole is a haunting, profoundly emotional collection that explores the fragility of human relationships, the weight of trauma, and the search for meaning in a world often defined by contradictions. Each story in the collection leaves a lasting impression, lingering in the mind long after you turn the final page. Fishow’s writing is surreal yet grounded, rich in symbolism and vivid description that blurs the lines between reality and the supernatural.
The stories explore universal themes such as grief, identity, and the yearning for belonging. Each character is fully realized, grappling with their own fractured sense of self in fantastical and strangely familiar ways. The collection’s charm lies in the way these characters, though often placed in extraordinary circumstances, remain achingly real due to their deeply relatable struggles.
Whether it’s the literal shrinking of existence in “When We Shrunk,” the all-too-realistic problematic student profiled in “High School Mixtape,” or the devastating descriptions of war echoing in “Go Back,” Fishow’s prose explores the fragmentation of life with depth.
What stands out in How to Love a Black Hole is the masterful way in which Fishow blends beauty and melancholy. The writing is introspective, filled with moments of quiet tension and powerful imagery that often leaves an undercurrent of unease. While the collection explores the darker sides of life, it also highlights the unexpected delight that can result from those struggles. There’s a palpable sense of vulnerability throughout, as each story feels like a window into the characters’ most intimate fears and desires.
Fishow’s ability to tap into the hidden, sometimes conflicting feelings we all harbor—whether it’s loss, hope, fear, or love—grounds these stories in a way that resonates with the reader. How to Love a Black Hole pulls you into the emotional messiness of life and the importance of our bonds with others, leaving you with an experience that’s both heart-wrenching and thought-provoking.
The impact of these stories will stay with you, making you reflect on the hidden forces that shape our lives and the complex process of understanding ourselves and those around us.
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.