Book Review: Softening

Teo Do Rio

Softening by Olivia Braley, ELJ Editions, Magpie Series, 2021

Reviewed by Scott Neuffer

Not sure why I’m getting déjà vu writing this review right now, but the feeling is strong. Maybe because Olivia Braley’s Softening, her debut prose chapbook, has universal appeal. Maybe it gets there through steady illumination of a particular pain, the hallmark of a great writer. At twenty pages, Softening is short but impactful, a series of crystalline vignettes written in the second person, as if to address both reader and writer. Memories reveal the nexus of girlhood and childhood. The former is unfortunately shaped by male cruelty, by the razing gaze of a too familiar masculinity, that of the bully. The girl-child questions her own body under male assumptions. Later the cruelty of the male turns into violence, and the narrator is left wrestling the forces of trauma. Braley skillfully plumbs the relationship between trauma and memory, memory and nostalgia. The narrator seeks some reclamation of childhood, not necessarily innocence, but happiness, simplicity. After weaving a compelling and tragic narrative, the book alights on a final and delightful memory. It involves a younger sibling and milk bubbles. It invokes laughter. Here the author finds an emotional softening, a sense of wholeness and joy. Thrumming between these pages is the spirit of rebirth, resonating with humanity. Softening is a heartfelt and beautifully honest book, a true gem.