You, From Below by Em J Parsley

A Novella

Title: You, From Below: A Novella
Author: Em J Parsley
Publisher: Split/Lip Press
Publication Year: 2025
ISBN: 9781952897429
Rating: 4 stars

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I saw a post Split/Lip Press made on Instagram a little bit ago looking for Bookstagrammers and people who are new to book reviewing. The second bit sounded like me and I was intrigued by the way the books SLP publishes tend to transcend genre and definition, so I reached out. They were nice enough to share their 2024 Fall/Winter catalog with me, which is where I read about You, From Below and I knew I wanted to read it, so they were kind enough to send me an ARC (Advance Reading Copy). Is this what it feels like to be famous?

The novella is set in Appalachia and centers around an unnamed narrator who has just watched their town, Mission, be swallowed up by a sinkhole. The narrator has a letter in their pocket and knows they must deliver the message, so they leave the remnants of their valley and start walking up the mountain. Along the way, they encounter a faceless beekeeper, a woman covered in kudzu, the woman left behind after a rapture, and a girl waiting for her house to slide down the mountain side. They walk from August into the winter with no further desire than to make it to the end of their walk and deliver their message even though they don’t know who it is for.

I was kind of amazed by this book because while it is only 53 pages long, it feels much, much longer—and I mean that in a positive way. The way the narrator walks from the August heat into the crisp beginning of autumn into the soggy and cold end of autumn into snow storms makes the reader feel like they are similarly on a long journey. While the narrator walks, they are wrapped up not only in the people and experiences literally before them in the moment but also in the people and experiences of their life before the sinkhole claimed Mission.

The story is surreal, but at the same time the depictions of Mission and the Appalachian people resonated and felt extremely realistic to me. It was a juxtaposition that kept me feeling a little off balance the whole time I was reading. Usually, I wouldn’t like that in a book, but the feeling so perfectly mirrored what the narrator was feeling throughout the story that it felt important and appropriate with this particular story.

Parsley, the author, is also a poet and an environmentalist and these identities came through to me in this story. This book perfectly encapsulates SLP’s mission because while it is a fiction novella, some of the writing was so poetic that it took my breath away. I also don’t think that it is hard to see the environmental angle/cautionary tale to this story given some of the recent environmental disasters that have been experienced in Appalachia. In that way, Parsley has also written a timeless story because so much of Appalachian history is centered around extraction and exploitation. Many of the characters in this book face death or extinction and that is a huge theme throughout that to me sounded like a rallying cry for change and protections.

This book felt like part horror story and part hope and I’m so glad I had an opportunity to get an early look at it!