Kirkus Review
The latest collection from Slouka (Brewster, 2013, etc.), whose work has won an O. Henry Prize and appeared in Best American Short Stories, features 15 crisp, poignant, mostly downbeat tales.In the tender "Dominion," an elderly husband and wife, long married, find their home increasingly surrounded by coyotes and have to discover whether they have enough resilience left to withstand the invadersthe howling coydogs outside but also the slower, stealthier encroachments of death. "Half-Life" features a long-term shut-inshe glimpses her house's facade in a shot of a passing ambulance on the news, and it's the first time she's seen the front yard in 16 yearsfighting off an unexpected kind of intruder. "Then" is a lovely, nostalgic story built around a brief chance meeting, 40-odd years later, of sexagenarian former lovers who are feeling their age. She invites him, in parting, to think of her sometime: of her "then." Which he does for the rest of the story, restoratively, and for a while the aches and jaded jokes and sadness of age are banished. In "Conception," a young couple at the end of their tethersand perhaps at an end of their marriageare brought back from the brink by an encounter with future infirmity in the form of a naked, fallen neighbor. A son tries vainly to protect his Holocaust survivor father from painful memories in the haunting "The Hare's Mask." And in "Crossing," a father trying to reconnect with his son and his own boyhood by re-creating the back-country campout he used to do with his dad finds himself in trouble as he fords a snowmelt-swelled river with his son on his back.These are subtle, meditative, well-crafted stories, death-backed but life-affirming. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Readers of Slouka's (Nobody's Son, 2016) second collection of short stories, appearing long after the first, Lost Lake (1998), will be entranced by the lure of his cadence and the tug of his imagery that draws one gently, then more urgently into tales of death, regret, remorse, missed opportunities, and second chances. Their gentle rhythm can belie a pulsating tension in scenes set in musty lakeside cottages that spring into life as they are reclaimed each summer as guests sweep away the winter detritus of cobwebs and animal nests. Old homes, their windows cracked and porches sagging, silently speak in recrimination for essential relationships destined to fail. Even meeting an old lover on the street one night, as if in a Paul Simon lyric, can offer a thin lifeline to past times so good they were unsustainable. There is a lonely nostalgia in Slouka's fiction, but the power in the memories he so intensely evokes is heart stopping in its beauty, liberating in its acknowledgement of essential truths. The best short stories are complete unto themselves yet leave the reader wanting to know what happens, where the characters go, and what their futures hold. Put Slouka's work in the hands of fans of the Richards Ford, Powers, and Russo and watch what happens.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
These elegant stories are stuffed full of the bittersweet wisdom of people who have lived enough to know, as the title puts it, that "all that is left is all that matters," that "the world doesn't care for us - we pass through its rooms like ghosts," that "if there were any justice left it would shrivel and die at the injustice of it all." Yet Slouka's characters aren't so world-weary as to be cheerless; they're just real and flawed like the rest of us, their wisdom hard won. In "Then," Tom takes the train into Manhattan to escape, or perhaps to wallow in, a gathering sadness "about my father, wrapping up and not inclined to go gently, about time, about mortality, the speed of things." ft also becomes a journey into the past when Tom bumps into someone who was his lover 40 years earlier and remembers a weekend when the death of a stranger fortuitously (for them) delayed his lover's departure from the city - so one man's death became another's extra nights of passion. Death also looms over "Crossing," about an estranged dad taking his young son on a camping trip in the Pacific Northwest. No spoilers here, but the tension is as powerful as the "swiftly flowing field" of river water they must cross on foot, which is described so well that it comes alive, another character in yet another gem of a story.
Library Journal Review
In this meditative, powerfully moving collection, Slouka (Brewster) focuses on mortality and the passage of time, fearlessly confronting unpleasant truths about loss, death, and aging. As the title suggests, the book is philosophical and stoic in nature, exploring what it means to live and lose, make mistakes, and grow old in the company of our sorrows, missteps, and personal weaknesses. The poignant "Dominion" features a career journalist who feels that he "disappeared" after he retired. "Russian Mammoths" is a heartbreaking story about the loss of a child, a tragic accident in a neighborhood, and the Buddhist philosophy that life is divided into four parts, "reserving the last-after the kids, after the stuff-for enlightenment." "Crossing," which concludes the compilation, is a masterly story about a father-and-son camping trip gone awry, veering in a few terrifying moments from sublime pastoral to gritty existentialism. At the end, a father finds himself in the middle of a river dangerously swollen from a spring thaw with his son on his back and unsure if he can make it to shore. Verdict Beautifully written and essential for literary fiction fans. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]-Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.