Rating: /10

Synopsis

After a small coastal town is devastated by a hurricane, the survivors gravitate toward a long out-of-service payphone in hopes of talking out their grief and saying goodbye to loved ones, only for it to begin ringing on its own. As more townspeople answer the call, friends and family believed to have been lost to the storm begin searching for a way back home.

Quick Review

Stay on the Line is a deeply human novelette about the loss of a loved one, and a phone booth where it seems they can call the living back. It’s the kind of story you can’t help but finish in one sitting.

Full Review

Thanks to Shortwave Media for an audio ALC!

The way that author Clay McLeod Chapman makes you care so deeply for Jenny and her small family in such a short span of time should be applauded. It’s remarkable how in only a few pages, with few lines of dialogue, he makes us feel such grief surrounding the loss of her husband, and the overwhelming pressure that Jenny and her daughter feel in trying to carry on.

We’re left to linger in that grief for a long time before the supernatural elements of this novelette rear their head. There is something extremely tangible about the way this story is written with such relatable losses in the wake of Hurricane Aubrey. Even as a telephone booth begins to connect the survivors with the voices of those who died, everything remains focused on the human elements: love, loss, grief, and the strange relief at hearing the voice of somebody you loved and lost. 

Even as things escalate, there are no spectral figures around that phone booth. The voice of the dead is instead personified in the form of roots and ocean waves. Even in the supernatural, there is something extremely familiar about all of this.

I listened to the audiobook version of this novelette, which is about an hour long. The narration by Patricia Santomasso and Sean Patrick Hopkins, is absolutely brilliant, and plays with the theme of a phone line. At key moments, a voice might become fuzzy, as if it had a bad connection. I enjoyed the story, but their performances truly elevated it.

I highly recommend Stay on the Line. This novelette is the kind of story you burn through in one sitting.