When He Calls Your Name
Catherynne M. Valente
A creepy backwoods story
The finalists for the 2026 Best Novelette Hugo Award are:
★★★★☆ Kaiju Agonistes by Scott Lynch
☆☆☆☆☆ Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak
★★★★☆ Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy, by Martha Wells
☆☆☆☆☆ The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed
☆☆☆☆☆ The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker
★★★★☆ When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente
Cat Valente makes her readers work. She writes dense, elaborate prose in which every word counts. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, the pay-off is worth the effort. Indeed, I often feel that the pay-off is greater, for the simple reason that I have worked for it. On the other, it's exhausting. I can't read two Valente novels back-to-back. (I except her Fairyland books, which, being aimed at kids, are lighter reads.) I tell you truly and without exaggeration, I have read mathematics textbooks with less effort than Valente's most demanding novels. Palimpsest just about killed me.
When He Calls Your Name is a novelette, so it doesn't have space to reach math textbook levels of mental strain. It's a good story, perhaps a little less original than I usually expect of Valente, and I enjoyed it.
You can find it here, and an author interview here.
[spoiler1]
When He Calls Your Name in Uncanny Magazine Issue Sixty-Five
The story is Dolly Parton‘s Jolene, but she’s a vampire. Jolene, that is -- not Dolly. I am not, truth to tell, a huge fan of Parton‘s music or the song Jolene, but that’s OK. Valente‘s version is an improvement.
Excellent review! 💯
And writing styles can make a big difference in a reading experience, for sure.
I tend to like all writing styles, though sometimes I walk away having understood and followed what I read pretty well and sometimes not having understood and followed what I read pretty well.
But sometimes when I didn’t understand and follow what I read as well something that I did understand in it stands out to me more and makes more of an impression than it might have if I had understood and followed everything.
Also, I don’t always understand and follow life very well, and so books that I don’t understand or follow very well are actually more like how life sometimes is, and I see a benefit to that.
Also, Jolene being a vampire is a great idea! 🧛♀️
Thanks for sharing this excellent review with us readers! 🙏