Coming fall 2025 short story collection Deep Breaths of the Inanimate
“Veteran short story virtuoso Susan Lloy brings her distinctive magic to her fourth collection, Deep Breaths of the Inanimate, a meticulously wrought and resonant exploration of human loss and longing. Lloy’s characters grapple with the secrets of the past: a son who discovers that his late mother worked as a professional escort; two elderly friends whose lives are haunted by a newborn they abandoned as teenagers; a legislative aide whose career is derailed by a compromising video and finds solace in a community beset with fornicating rabbits. In sixteen poignant and memorable tales, set in that liminal emotional territory between regret and rebirth, Deep Breaths of the Inanimate charts a course straight to the reader’s heart.”
Age is the great divider. One side fused of fire and lust, the other undetected like fallout. The characters in this collection have been plucked and blown through time like pollen on the wind, often rooting themselves in foreign landscapes both beautiful and adverse, sometimes altered, yet always unyielding, ripe for transformation. Nothing Comes Back is a deeply captivating collection by a major literary talent working at the top of her craft.
Susan's newest collection of stories, Nothing Comes Back, is available now!
Reviews
“This superbly written, exquisitely detailed collection, Nothing Comes Back by Susan Lloy, is a pageant of sharply drawn, idiosyncratic characters who are each in their own way approaching the ultimate question: What does it mean to wrestle with the rage of later life? In “The Wayward Collective,” we meet a cadre of yearning souls who out-do the eccentrics of The Big Chill in their search for a deeper meaning in life they can only fumble toward. In “Synthesis of a Dream” a husband and wife take a sailing trip to the destiny of their relationship that neither of them willfully bargain for. And so what does come back? As it turns out, everything.”
“If you’re looking for a Baby Boomer utopia, you’re in the wrong place. Though Lloy’s characters have ‘retired’, their futures are clouded with uncertainty. Change is here, and the struggle to embrace it runs through each woman’s story, as Lloy takes her reader on a series of poignant homeward journeys. Edgy, intimate and entertaining, Lloy’s work is a metaphorical battle between the Grand Canyons and Atlantic Oceans of our lives. All we know is that, at some point, we have to jump in..”
“Susan Lloy writes memorable stories with great characters and dialogue. Whether it’s Vito, Lottie, Izzy, Alfie, Ophelia, or Clementine of the Hollywood Hills—all of her characters come to life in her imaginative stories that resonate with our readers. Susan is a talent to behold.”
“The tragic nostalgia, poetic settings and subtle character manifestations in Susan Lloy’s new short story collection depict a writer’s voice as wise as it is resplendent with insight into a human condition once lived and now begging for reconnection.”
“Susan Lloy’s Nothing Comes Back offers an astute and poignant look at the far side of middle age through eighteen stories that ring and purr with the astonishing music. From the choppy shores of the Mediterranean to the windswept sandstones of southern Utah, Lloy’s characters are pilgrims through time as much as space, reflecting on their journeys while they scout novel territory. Like Virginia Woolf and Alice Munro before her, Lloy has a gift for capturing the passage of years with fleet-fingered certainty, creating a panoramic tapestry with mere brush strokes. Nothing Comes Back is a deeply captivating collection that reveals a major literary talent at her finest hour. These are moving, majestic, must-read stories.”
“Susan E. Lloy’s Nothing Comes Back provides a dark, sometimes humorous, look at the Sid-Vicious-and-Nancy, baby bust generation as they struggle to cross the finish line to retirement, many with disastrous results. Lloys’ stories have a unique mix of characters, conflicts, and settings including polygamous Mormon soft porn out West, the perils of poor Nova Scotian real estate nest egg investments, and marital jealousy and mayhem while sailing on the Mediterranean Sea. Her stories are surprising and entertaining, many with unexpected twists or endings.”
“If you’re living in present times, there’s a considerable possibility that you find yourself with AN ADDITIONAL 30+ years on your hands. Susan E. Lloy’s Nothing Comes Back taps into the psyche of adventurous types who find themselves coming to terms with LIVING AN ENTIRE SECOND ADULT LIFE. Entertaining and unpredictable stories of modern explorers as they venture into the unknown.”