Review: Abbreviate

The Strength in Womanhood
Review: Abbreviate

Erica Rose
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Sarah Fawn Montgomery
Essays
Small Harbor Publishing pp. 82 
Cost: $18.00​

In Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s new collection of lyric essays, Abbreviate, readers are treated to the captivating beauty of her narrative work and the haunting vulnerability that comes with it. In just nineteen essays, she shares reflections and revelations, transporting us into the critical moments that have shaped her life and, in turn, mirror the experiences of so many women. Her language is both delicate and powerful, a reference to the feminine. At the same time, the unsettling and sometimes horrifying nature of her subjects—pain, loss, identity, womanhood—is skillfully woven together, creating a tapestry of beauty, nostalgia, and truth that lingers long after the final page.

Montgomery’s collection is not simply a recount of her experience; her essays interrogate her past and expand on it. She touches on the abuse she suffered through as a child, the neglect that followed hand in hand, and how life was growing as a person with these events hanging over her head. Montgomery writes with the awareness that to be a woman is to be constantly observed, judged, and shaped by others, yet she also claims the page as a place of defiance, where her own voice becomes impossible to ignore.

In her essay “Planetarium,” Montgomery reflects on the vastness of the universe as a metaphor for the vastness of imagination, especially in girlhood: “Under the covers, I look out the windows at the darkening sky. No one ignores the Milky Way. No one tells the moon what to do. I imagine myself as big as the heavens. I pretend I am so big my stories take up the sky” (9). These lines capture both the wonder and the tragedy of growing up female in a world that works to contain that wonder.  Montgomery relives what it is like for a child to imagine her place in the world, yet the reader can sense how fragile that dream is. The hopes and ambitions of little girls are so often compressed into boxes of should and should not, dictated by cultural norms and expectations that persist across generations. With fresh and interesting metaphors and captivating imagery, Montgomery explores the tension between boundlessness and constraint, between the child who dreams of the stars and the adult who learns the limits of gravity.

Throughout Abbreviate, Montgomery’s essays explore how those limits are imposed not just by men, but by an entire social web—teachers, parents, friends, family, strangers, and even the self. She refuses to reduce her experiences to a statistic, exposing the complexities of human behavior. The result is a series of essays that feel deeply human—achingly honest yet full of grace.

Montgomery’s prose style reinforces these themes; her language and detail blur the boundaries between poetry and essay, giving her words a rhythm that mirrors breath, carrying emotion beneath the surface. Even when Montgomery writes of fear or pain, there is an undeniable beauty in the way she renders it, as though she is reclaiming her story by transforming suffering into art. In her essay “Hug Your Mad,” she writes: “You hug your mad, but it will not disappear, like the memory of your older cousin pinning you down like butterfly Barbie, limbs splayed, face frozen” (25). The use of metaphor to describe a horrific experience and make it seem almost beautiful is a talent. The vivid picture of a scene reminiscent of childhood, yet to an adult—someone who knows what story is being told—a masterpiece on the page emerges in crimson Rorschach. 
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Ultimately, Abbreviate is not merely a collection of essays; it is an act of reclamation. Her reflections remind us of the shared, often unspoken struggles that define womanhood: the yearning to be heard, the pressure to conform, and the resilience required to endure. In giving voice to her own experience, she gives voice to countless others who have been told to stay quiet. It teaches us that our stories—no matter how fractured or abbreviated—deserve to take up space. Through her luminous prose, Sarah Fawn Montgomery reminds us that our voices, like constellations, form patterns of meaning in the dark, guiding us toward understanding—and perhaps toward ourselves.