The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons

Winner oF The 2014 Iowa short fiction award, Heather A. Slomski’s debut story collection The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons brings us a fresh new voice in literary fiction. In prose spare and daring, elegant yet startling, these stories drop their roots in reality, but take intermittent leaps into the surreal. Two couples meet for dinner to acknowledge an affair. A mannequin recalls a lover and the life she mysteriously lost. Two girls observe a young widow’s grief through a café window. A man’s hat has the power of Cinderella’s shoe. In the fifteen stories that comprise this collection—some nearly novellas, others short as breaths—Slomski writes with a keen eye about relationships. About the desires that pull us together and the betrayals that push us apart. About jealousy, obsession, loneliness, and regret—the byproducts of loving someone that keep us awake at night. The characters in these stories share meals, drink wine, buy furniture and art. They live domestic lives, so often wanting to love someone yet ending up alone. In one story, a woman’s fiancé leaves her when she goes to post some mail. In another story, a man can’t move past an affair his wife almost had. Another story describes a series of drawings to piece together a couple’s end. But while loss and heartache pervade these stories, there is also occasional hope. For, as the title story shows us, sometimes a breakup isn’t an end at all, but the beginning of your life.

About the Author :
After earning her MFA from Western Michigan University, USA, Heather A. Slomski held the Axton Fellowship in Fiction at the University of Louisville, USA. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, American Letters & Commentary, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, The Normal School, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Minnesota State Artist Initiative Grant and a Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant, she currently teaches writing at Concordia College, USA, and lives in Moorhead, Minnesota, USA, with her husband, their son, and their dog.

Review :
"The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons is a debut collection of tremendous charm. Charm as in delight; charm as if by magic. In a prose that's never less than lucidly graceful, Heather A. Slomski conjures stories distinguished by, and memorable for, their imaginative power."--Stuart Dybek "Heather A. Slomski's stories are downright addictive. I kept promising myself to turn off the light after just one more, and then breaking that promise, beguiled by her cool, measured prose and by the surprises, tensions, and uncanny encounters simmering beneath its elegant surface."--Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author, Madeleine Is Sleeping "Never far from a dining table, the characters in Heather A. Slomski's limpid and elegant debut collection are not given to melodramatics. Civility reigns, voices are not raised, much goes unsaid. But just beneath the sophisticated composure are longing, loss, heartbreak. And how intensely familiar is the table itself, which made this reader suddenly understand how much of our real life takes place there. Heather A. Slomski is truly a fresh voice on the scene, and The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons is that rare thing, a new book as innovative in its design as it is compulsively readable."--Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award winning author, Lord of Misrule "Slomski is a writer's writer, with a gift for lyrical prose, clever plotting and significant detail that reveals depth of character."--Kirkus starred review "The stories in The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons comprise an implacable, uncommon contemplation of the systems of disquiet that underpin the common life. In prose of rare leanness and refinement, Heather A. Slomski accomplishes a powerful investigation into how we live and suffer and dine."--Wells Tower