“What can be found within the flames” : A Review of Assemblage by Abigail Stewart

By Alex Carrigan

In her new short story collection Assemblage, Abigail Stewart builds a campfire for twelve stories about refuge and control to gather around. These stories begin as dramas, but like any good campfire story, bring in an element of the unreal when you least expect it. The new collection from Alien Buddha Press asks the reader to see what can be found within the flames as each story is presented.

Assemblage’s stories are primarily tales of female protagonists trying to exist in a space and in their comfort but being challenged by forces that seek to disrupt their harmony. What’s fascinating is that Stewart presents her themes and motifs throughout the collection, but also is willing to play around with them to present stories that address these details in different ways. For example, the first story of the collection, “Found Object” ends with a disastrous moment on a ferry, representing the likely end of its protagonist, while “Liminal Space” uses a disastrous moment on a ferry to represent a rebirth of its protagonist.

This willingness to reexamine her own themes is prevalent in some of the darker pieces in the collection. Two of the strongest stories, “Honeycomb” and “The Damp,” deal with protagonists whose partners turn abusive and controlling, and where pregnancy becomes an added complication to their situation. Stewart uses both stories to address the subject of domestic abuse, but also acknowledges the different levels of abusive relationships. In “Honeycomb,” the protagonist is in a marriage that begins to unravel once she becomes pregnant, but is one where she has the tools and ability to remain strong and escape the situation on her own. “The Damp” follows a woman with less resources at her disposal and a much more dangerous partner. While both stories do turn for the fantastic in order for these women to survive, Stewart uses the settings and details of each story to explore the depth of the subject.

Likewise, Stewart also plays into how women will turn to nature or new communities to escape their troubles, only to find that nature is much harsher than anticipated and that utopia is largely a lie. While some fit reasonably in the real world, such as “Mystical Flower Garden” and its hippie campground, or “God’s Acre” for its hiking trail that provides the setting for a date gone wrong, others go further. The final and longest story in the collection, “Bone Dry,” is a tale that allows Stewart to play with her themes and settings in a way that becomes a warning.

In “Bone Dry,” a former art teacher named Dove joins an artist’s commune in the desert. Stewart presents a scenario of a near-future setting where art becomes a dead end as programs and funding are cut at national levels to the point art is an act of rebellion. Dove joins the commune to focus on her installation work, meeting other artists who sought an escape from society and the desire to make art for the sake of art. However, the story presents the harsh truth that art is an expression and commodity, and even idealistic communes can be the weapons to devalue art.

Assemblage is an intelligent and meticulous collection about all the ways women try to exist and connect with one another, but also how easily that equilibrium can be disrupted. It’s an engrossing collection that leaves the reader curious how fantastic Stewart will go, or whether she’ll allow the reality of the situation be enough of an uncanny danger for the protagonists to deal with. It’s a collection of universal fears and dangers but presented in a wholly unique way that makes for a memorable assemblage of “warnings to” and “warnings from.”

Alex Carrigan (he/him; @carriganak) is an editor, poet, and critic from Virginia. His debut poetry chapbook, ‘May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry’ (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), was longlisted for Perennial Press‘ 2022 Chapbook Awards. He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Barrelhouse, Sage Cigarettes (Best of the Net Nominee, 2023), ‘Stories About Penises’ (Guts Publishing, 2019), and more.