By VK Lynne
Review: Once Removed by Colette Sartor
I first met Colette Sartor in 2020. She was sitting in her backyard, adjusting her glasses and announcing, in the middle of a women’s writing meeting, that she had a sourdough bread to check. I was smitten.
Of course, whether my admiration translated through the portal of Zoom is anyone’s guess, but she became a friend through those Women Who Submit check-ins, and then later through the pages of her enchanting book, Once Removed.
Colette’s writing is much like the woman herself: No nonsense, yet sensitive; incisive, yet gentle. She was one of the first in the group to listen to my music and tell everyone else to do the same, and when I told her that I planned to read her book in order to write a review, she briskly popped a copy in the mail before I could object.
There is always that one person, when you join a new group, who you gravitate toward to find your footing. I had joined Women Who Submit perhaps a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, but had not really felt like a concrete part of the community, until the meetings became virtual and weekly.
That first morning, as I scanned the boxes, something about the woman with the half-smile, long dark hair and knowing eyeglasses settled my nervousness, and gave me the courage to return, Saturday after Saturday.
So of course, I really wanted her book to be good. There are few things worse than building something or someone up in your head, only for the idol to come crashing down from the pedestal once the statue is exposed as mere stone.
Fortunately, as I turned page after page of the short story collection, it became clear that it was not a gilt facade, but a solid golden cathedral.
Each story is discrete, yet all the tales are connected. In this way, Colette acknowledges that there is dignity and value in our starring roles in our individual life stories, while gently reminding us that we are also a supporting characters in many others’.
As the stories describe various women’s journeys, and losses they suffer along the way, it becomes a book that commiserates and comforts its reader. We are all struggling, we are all succeeding and failing, and while our tragedies are to be honored, they should not isolate us in despair- for we are not alone.
Colette deftly stitches the pieces of each life’s fabric together into a bittersweet tapestry that reveals its glorious pattern gradually, beautifully, until the final page, when the entire work is thrown into the light to take your breath away.
Once Removed is one of the very few books I’ve read that left me greedily turning back to the beginning immediately upon completion to walk the path again. More slowly this time, I began to notice the sweet harbingers, the dangerous forebodings, and the profound lessons strewn along the way.
The Saturday after I finished reading, I logged on to Zoom and saw Colette propped in her bed, a smile curling up one side of her face, and I longed to climb through the screen to hug her in gratitude for the experience that is her book. Ruefully, I knew that even if we’d been face to face at that time, we still could not have embraced, because we were still in the plague of distance.
So instead, I wrote this down. Colette, for me, your book served as a reparative to that isolation. It brings its reader edification and visibility and empathy. It offers perspective, healing, and wisdom…and not a small amount of joy.
Thank you.
VK Lynne is a writer and musician from Los Angeles, and a 2015 recipient of the Jentel Foundation Artist Residency Program Award for writing. She penned the award-winning web series ‘Trading on 15’, and authored the novels ‘Even Solomon’ and ‘A Pook is Born.’ Her two poetry volumes, ‘Crisis’ and ‘Revelation,’ make up the audiobook ‘The Release and Reclamation of Victoria Kerygma.’
Her writing has been published in the LA Poet Society’s Anthology “Los Angeles Poets For Justice: A Document for the People”, Image Curve, The Elephant Journal, GEM Magazine, and Guitar Girls Magazine.
