Letting go is never easy. We are rooted in tradition, in promises, in expectations. And yet, we inevitably reach that moment when the old, the familiar, the safe no longer serves, when we must release whatever anchors us in order to survive.

Lynn Sloan’s new collection of stories, This Far Isn’t Far Enough, is full of characters faced with the choice of letting go. For some, the choice is liberating, soothing. For others, the release is pinching, dangerous. In either case, such decisions are never simple, never so clean in consequence.

I’m honored to host Lynn Sloan today to talk about This Far Isn’t Far Enough. Her opening story, “Ollie’s Back,” will be read on NPR’s Selected Shorts in March. Here, gain insight into her work and enter the giveaway for a copy of her book (courtesy of Fomite Press & Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity). Sign up by Tuesday, February 27th. Now, welcome Lynn Sloan!

Christi Craig (CC): This Far Isn’t Far Enough brings together a myriad of stories about a young woman who wants to be a prizefighter, a widow living under the thumb of her husband even after he’s gone, and about an artist lost between fantasy and reality–just to name a few. Which was the first story you wrote, and how did this collection grow from there?

Lynn Sloan (LS): The earliest story included in this collection is “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” the one about a young woman who wants to become a prizefighter. That story came to be when I had a friend who wanted to become a prizefighter. After serious training, she invited me to her first fight. “What must your mother think?” I wondered as I watched my friend get pummeled, and pummel her opponent. My friend had not invited her mother to that fight or to any that came afterward. As far I know, her mother never found out about my friend’s short, but prize-filled boxing career. I had a little baby at that time, and I must have been grappling with how one adjusts to one’s beloved child getting beat up.

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Grief is not the exclusive province of death and dying in Lynn Sloan’s poignant short story collection This Far Isn’t Far Enough. Rather, we experience loss, deeply, in the many ordinary gaps and failures of our lives, over and over again.

To read this review click:

Event date: Friday, March 2, 7:30 pm

Event address:
Women & Children First
5233 North Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60640 ​

One of the fiction-writing super powers I admire most is the ability to inhabit a wide range of characters and worlds, and to write about each of them with great empathy and understanding. In her story collection This Far Isn’t Far Enough, Lynn Sloan shows a special gift in this regard. She immerses us in the lives of everyone from a deceived and disillusioned widow, to an anxious soldier pulled into a possibly criminal scheme, to a worried mother of an aspiring prizefighter. As Sloan explores the inner and outer and conflicts that these characters face, she does so with deep feeling and insight.

To read more of Small Press Picks review ofThis Far Isn’t Far Enough click.

I am grateful to Hallie Koontz for her in-depth and generous review. (This review is no longer available online.)

I am thrilled with Susan Schoch’s generous review of This Far Isn’t Far Enough that appeared on StoryCircle.org on January 2018. The review is no longer available online, but here is an excerpt.

“Sloan uses the language with care and creativity. In the small worlds created by the limits of short fiction, This Far Isn’t Far Enough offers realities that are recognizable, yet the outcomes are not predictable. The book leaves a flavor that lingers–not sweetness, but the mineral clarity of a deep well. It’s a satisfying swig of human longing and learning.”

A review of This Far Isn’t Far Enough by Lynn Sloan

January 4, 2018

Reviewed by Ruth Latta

This Far Isn’t Far Enough
by Lynn Sloan
Fomite Press
Feb 2018, ISBN 9781944388294

Internationally-known fine art photographer, Lynn Sloan, is also an accomplished writer. The fourteen short stories in her first collection, This Far Isn’t Far Enough, have all been published in literary magazines of note. “Bird”, for example, one of my favourites, appeared in the Connecticut Review.

In “Bird”, an American Midwestern grandmother, Martha, who has just buried her husband of many years, thinks back to the affair she had with Glenn, who predeceased her husband by seven years. Their affair ended when her husband found out and gave her an ultimatum. Post-funeral, a bird gets into her house – an omen of death, although this is not spelled out in the story. (For more about this superstition, read A Bird in the House by Margaret Laurence.) Two of the most significant people in Martha’s life have already died before the bird got indoors, and something else dies – her illusions.

Among her sympathy cards is one from Glenn’s widow, and, feeling a bond with her, Martha drives out into the country to drop in on her. Their meeting is cordial, but during its course, Martha learns something that shakes her version of the past.

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Thank you, Jaclyn Bauer of Centered on Books, for your pre-publcation review of my story collection, This Far Isn’t Far Enough.

This Far Isn’t Far Enough encapsulates perfectly the feeling in every one of Lynn Sloan’s new short stories. The stories in Sloan’s collection are tragedies that nearly break your heart, or often do. Every sad ending, it seems, is the result of someone not going far enough or something not being quite enough: someone trying but not hard enough, someone succeeding, but not in the way they imagined, or someone simply being swallowed by the reality of their incapacity to evoke change in their lives.

Though the underlying theme seems to be the same across stories, Sloan does a superb job of diversifying her characters and setting each scene on a new and fresh stage. There’s the story of Ollie, the chef betrayed by his partner, friend, and lover Donnie. Ollie who is given a chance at a comeback after a scandal at his previous restaurant. But is this new chance enough? Will Donnie always haunt Ollie even in his glory – haunt him through others and through Ollie’s own memory? Is a new restaurant enough to erase the pain?

Then there’s “A Little 1,2,3;” the story of Betty, a window confined to an assisted living home with not only the memories, but the visceral visions of her recently deceased husband beckoning her towards death. If only he hadn’t slipped while cleaning the gun. All Betty wants is to be with her husband, to escape the reality of all that she can’t remember and all that she can. But will death be enough to find happiness? Could death at the hands of the same gun that killed her husband save her from her misery?

Every one of Sloan’s characters is a monument to “what if” and “if only” and they remind readers to stop, to erase this ever-present message in humanity’s mind, because even under the guise of “if,” it could still not take you far enough. Life could still be just what it is or just what you don’t want it to be. Sloan’s characters remind us to make the effort, to live fully in what you have, and to cherish everything without the “if.”