There’s Always More to Say by Natalie Southworth
Guest Review by Laura Rock Gaughan
Natalie Southworth's debut literary fiction collection, There's Always More to Say, presents children as intimate witnesses to parental failures ranging from comically offbeat to devastating. In each of the nine stories, a girl or woman chronicles a domestic crisis that passes for everyday life, which in turn infects her view of her own future. Southworth’s protagonists apply a critical gaze. Their assessments of the dynamics—within families, among friends—are precise and unsparing. Yet their responses also contain compassion and acts of loyalty, along with a palpable sense of heartbreak ahead.
In “Going Places,” schoolgirls Doreen and Ivette test the boundaries of desire. Whether it’s pursuing high school boys or dreaming of a supercharged professional adulthood, Ivette is the observer, taking cues from the bolder Doreen. “What they both wanted was to be men, in charge, calling the shots like their fathers.” But the fathers are deflated in middle age:
They’d worked hard for years and provided for their families and seemed bought in. They’d worn suits with ties and carried briefcases and money clips and answered the phone during dinner and cared about raindrops on their wristwatches. Somewhere along the way they lost their footing, or their confidence, or sensed they didn’t have much to begin with and everything that had come before—the house, the work, the family—was erased and they were part of some set-up, some ploy.
Nevertheless, Doreen and Ivette believe their fathers are in control, unlike their mothers. “Neither mother worked, or cooked without a toaster oven, or exercised without makeup. To their daughters, it looked like they didn’t take their lives seriously.”
Three linked stories follow a family fracturing beneath the weight of the mother’s mental illness. In the title story, Cora accompanies her older sister Rachel, an aspiring journalist, to a potential crime scene. Rachel counsels Cora to save herself, writing off their mother as an emotional sinkhole. “The Bottom Line” takes place two years earlier, as the mother’s condition worsens and the family conspires to respect her wishes not to return to the hospital. Again, the sisterly contrast is evident: Rachel plots her escape, while Cora roots herself at home, decoding her mother’s last messages as she surrenders to paramedics. In the final story, “Inheritance,” Cora and Rachel are adults marking their mother’s death, estranged yet reaching for one another in the tiniest of increments.
While it’s hard to choose, my favourite story was “The Realtor,” which pits a sensitive artist, a puppeteer, against the expectations of his new career as a realtor. The daughter sees the battle lines clearly—and so do we, thanks to Southworth’s elegant style and deft use of imagery. By the end, she must choose between a lofty idea of her father and the pragmatic, but humiliating, plans of her mother.
The collection explores ideas of worldly success and personal agency through characters who gravitate toward ambiguity, even when they want to be ruthless strivers. Reading this book was an immersive experience that carried me back to memories of being a child and then a teenager, caught in others' decisions while yearning for an adult’s powers to move through our complicated world.
About the Author
Natalie Southworth’s short stories have appeared in literary journals in Canada, the US, and the UK. They have won The Brighton Prize, placed third in The Moth Short Story Prize, and were finalists for The Fish Prize, The New Quarterly‘s Peter Hinchcliffe Award, and Prairie Fire‘s McNally Robinson Booksellers Short Fiction Contest.
About the Reviewer
Laura Rock Gaughan’s fiction and essays have appeared in Canadian, Irish, and US literary journals including The Antigonish Review, the New Quarterly, Southword, CutBank, and CRAFT Literary. She’s the author of MOTHERISH, a short story collection, and is currently at work on another collection, as well as a novel.
Book Details
Publisher : Linda Leith Publishing
Publication date : March 14 2026
Language : English
Print length : 170 pages
ISBN-10 : 1773901869
ISBN-13 : 978-1773901862