“Pip and the Fairies” by Theodora Goss
Originally published on Strange Horizons, 3 October 2005
Nebula Award nominee for Best Short Story

Susan Lawson was the author of a series of children’s books about a girl named Pip and her adventures in a magical land with the likes of Jack Feather, Hyacinth, and the Thorn King. Her daughter Philippa, now a successful soap opera star, was the inspiration for those stories. When her mother passes away, everyone remembers how much they enjoyed the Pip books when they were children, and suddenly Philippa is again living in her mother’s shadow. She leaves her job, her home, and her life in California and goes back to the cabin in the New England woods where her mother wrote the books. There she tries to deal with the memories of her mother, the burden of her mother’s fame (and her own), and what really happened during her childhood, when the stories were more than just stories.

Like “Helen Remembers the Stork Club,” this story is mostly a character study and vignette, with some fantasy elements thrown in that intensify the overall feeling of melancholic nostalgia. We’re given glimpses of Philippa’s personality and life, both as a grown up TV star and as a child, when the reality was both more and less wonderful than fans of her mother’s books would realize.

I tend to have a harder time with short stories than with longer works, because at such lengths it’s hard to do the kind of idea- or plot-based things that get me going. “Pip and the Fairies” is a deft bit of portraiture and a fine piece of writing, but it didn’t rise above that personal limitation to really stand out in my mind. That is, I stress, purely a personal response, and no reflection on the story’s objective merits or Ms. Goss’ talent.