All That Is Left Is All That Matters, Mark Slouka
All That Is Left Is All That Matters, Mark Slouka
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All That Is Left Is All That Matters
Stories

Author: Mark Slouka

Narrator: Cris Dukehart, James Anderson Foster

Unabridged: 4 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/10/2018

Synopsis

In eleven beautifully wrought stories—ranging from occupied Czechoslovakia to California's Central Valley to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest—Mark Slouka explores moments in life when our backs are to the wall. Whether battling the end of desire, the fact of injustice, or death itself, the men and women in these stories are willing to use whatever comes to hand—luck, accident, desperate gesture—to emerge victorious.

In "Crossing," a father hoping to compensate for his failures finds himself facing his past while fording a river with his young son on his back; in "Conception," a young couple frozen by the possible end of their marriage is offered an unexpected way back; in "Half- Life," a proud, aging shut-in finds her resolve tested by an extraordinary visitor determined to shatter her solitude. Alternately harrowing and redemptive, these are stories of ordinary men and women, doing everything possible to tighten their grip on life.

About Mark Slouka

Mark Slouka is the author of works of fiction including Brewster, Lost Lake, a New York Times Notable Book, and The Visible World, a finalist for the British Book Award. His essay collection, Essays from the Nick of Time, was the winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award. A contributing editor at Harper's, Slouka's work has also appeared in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, and the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. He lives in Brewster, New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lolly K Dandeneau on June 11, 2018

via my blog: [URL not allowed] 'Who knows what somber ancestor had passed on to me this talent, this precocious ear for loss? For a while, because of it, I misheard almost everything.' The stories in this collection are moving and an expression, in a sense, of life and encroaching......more

Goodreads review by Michael on December 14, 2018

Published this year (2018), Mark Slouka’s second volume of short stories arrives twenty years after his first exercise in the short form, Lost Lake. The stories in this volume are decidedly more on the American side of Slouka’s spectrum of experience. Whereas his first collection to a large extent f......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on July 25, 2019

This elegiac collection is often melancholy but never sentimental, even as his characters contend with losses both small and enormous. Slouka is strong on the form, with a deft control of language and, in particular, plotting—each of his characters, even the youngest, meets some form of great change......more

Goodreads review by Christina on June 13, 2018

I didn’t really know what to expect from this collection of short stories, but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Each story was very interesting, each of them coming from different walks of life, in different settings, and with vastly different plots. But even though each story was differe......more

Goodreads review by Crystal on January 05, 2019

These stories are an exploration of grief, loss and coming to terms with one's our mortality. Powerful themes indeed, which offered the reader a chance to explore and reflect on his/her own thought on the inevitability of death and the weight of loss. One story of particular note was 'The Hare's Mas......more

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