Leaf – by Carolyn Watson

Premise:

Six-year-old Beatrice notices a leaf sprouting out of her mother’s hair. Her only concern is how to water it. Her mother is too busy setting up a real estate deal to pay attention to her newfound foliage. All the leaf wants to do is conquer the world.

Review:

Hmm, not quite urban realism. Puts me in mind of J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal Worldwhere the world’s lifeforms mutate into a crystal jungle. The question inspired by both is not so much “Why?” as “What does the symbolism mean?” Does the leaf stand for the inevitability of greed destroying humanity? The suicidal nature of our civilization? Is there an implication innocence alone guarantees survival? Or does it represent, through role reversal, what we are doing to the natural world? Or merely Nature’s revenge? Or just a leaf trying to take over the world? I don’t much care, actually. I simply sat back and enjoyed the surreal imagery as I read, rather like contemplating a painting by Max Ernst. Intriguing in and of itself.

Graeme Cameron, The Clubhouse Review, Amazing Stories

“The House on Whaler Bay” is a beautifully written story by Carolyn Watson about Meryl and Lottie, elderly twin sisters growing old together. The twins cling to the last of their independence in the midst of failing health. Their interactions are comical and the story movingly portrays how society selfishly treats its elder members. The twins’ niece, Miriam, and her family are the every-family with lives of their own, but no time for their elderly relatives. Meryl and Lottie wind up in a nursing home where they are shadows of their former selves: “The twins closed their eyes to their visitors. They had stopped speaking to the family and no amount of begging or pleading could persuade them otherwise.”

Zachary Boissonneau, The Review Review

The inane world of celebrity adoptions is ribbed by Carolyn Watson in “Little Precious,” as a famous actress adopts a child from a foreign land who turns out to be a demon. It is played for laughs, needling the folly of our celebrity culture and the spin of Hollywood press.

Bob Blough, Tangent

The “Little Precious” in the story by Carolyn Watson is a beast-like child, adopted in a foreign country by a vain actress named Fritzi Fayre. She calls the boy Tigger and wants to make something out of him in the nicely written little satire.

Sam Tomaino, SFRevu Review