RaveFiction Writers ReviewAusubel’s prose is pared down to a children’s book simplicity that matches these seemingly whimsical plots. Her sentences are lean and precise, ho[m]ing in on the exact right image ... In fact, these stories are so deceptively simple and spare, about a quarter of the way through, I closed the book and thought to myself, is this really it? But as I continued to read I realized Ausubel’s fabulism was not the mythmaking sort practiced by Kelly Link and Shirley Jackson but more closely akin to Voltaire and his satirical novel Candide. Like the titular protagonist of Voltaire’s novel, Ausubel’s protagonists—almost all straight, white, and callow—lead privileged lives, unable to comprehend the world’s cruelty outside the frame of their solipsism ... In the end, Awayland is the fabulist short story collection America deserves in the moment when we find ourselves gripped in another fabulist’s narcissism, slowly evaporating, being rendered nothing more than a blip in the world’s weather.
