All That Is Left Is All That Matters

by Mark Slouka

Overview

A searing, poignantly rendered collection of stories chronicling the lives of ordinary people battling the forces of love and loss, from "one of the great unsung writers of our time" (Colum McCann).

In fifteen 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 back is to the wall. One of the most forceful American writers of his generation, Slouka captures the depth and emotional range of an array of characters—from a young boy attempting to shield his father from painful memories in "The Hare’s Mask" to a lonely man whose beloved dog inexplicably begins to sprout razor blades from her skin in "Dog."

Whether battling the end of desire, the fact of injustice, or death itself, the men and women in these stories are doing everything possible to tighten their grip on life. 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.

Like its title, All That Is Left Is All That Matters consoles us with life’s tender humor and unexpected moments of redemption in the face of heartbreak, tragedy, and dislocation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393292282
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/26/2018
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mark Slouka’s most recent books are the story collection All That Is Left Is All That Matters, the memoir Nobody’s Son, and the award-winning novel Brewster. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, and the PEN / O. Henry Prize Stories. He lives in Prague.

Editorial Reviews

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.

The New York Times Book Review - Alison McCulloch

"Mark Slouka knows the secrets of story-making: the complex characters registered with the flick of a gesture, the catch-breath moments of collapsing certainty, the unerring recoil of memory—and in every line the razor’s edge, the frightful mortal implication. All That Is Left Is All That Matters is a perfectly titled and brilliantly written collection."

Sven Birkerts

"The power in the memories [Slouka] so intensely evokes is heart stopping in its beauty, liberating in its acknowledgment of essential truths. . . . Put Slouka's work in the hands of fans of the Richards—Ford, Powers, and Russo—and watch what happens."

starred Booklist

"Few writers convey the urgencies of the heart like Mark Slouka does. Remorse, betrayal, fear, mortality—love, most of all—in these wondrous stories the most powerful emotions shine from the smallest details: the lonely creak of oarlocks, the silence of a man about to cry, the groan of a screen door opening a lifetime ago, the lies with which we console ourselves against inevitable loss."

Andrew Foster Altschul

"The subtlety of these wonderful stories takes you by stealth. They leave you with the startled feeling that you’ve traveled a long distance and emerged in an unexpected new place. Mark Slouka is a writer of enormous and unusual gifts, and he offers them graciously and with an appealing wryness."

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

"Mark Slouka perfectly breaks open my heart with each truthful, gorgeous sentence. I wish I could write out for you all the sentences and passages I underlined. But that would be the whole shebang, the whole damn book."

Victoria Redel

"Slouka showcases not merely his productivity and versatility, but his gift for creating consistently engaging and emotionally resonant stories in whatever literary form he chooses. . . . stories as tender and beautiful as these are among those things that might, paradoxically, serve to persuade thoughtful readers that life is worth living."

Shelf Awareness

"Mark Slouka is one of the best American writers alive today, and the title of his new story collection is perfect: this is essential stuff, and it will break your heart."

Brian Hall

2018-04-03
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 invaders—the howling coydogs outside but also the slower, stealthier encroachments of death. "Half-Life" features a long-term shut-in—she 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 years—fighting 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 tethers—and perhaps at an end of their marriage—are 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.

Kirkus Reviews