AVAILABLE MAY 2016
Heart Attack Watch is built around disasters large and small: those we know enough to fear but for which we can never prepare. The blackout. The car crash. The diagnosis. In these moments of reckoning, Alyson Foster’s characters grow achingly alive.
Julia, the dreamy bus driver of “The Theory of Clouds,” finds herself vulnerable when a group of environmental scientists arrive in her factory town, galvanizing suspicion in her community and in her own home. In “Blight,” Katherine learns she is rapidly going blind, while her husband tries to shield her from another creeping threat. In the title story, Jane, a recent college dropout, ponders the reaches of outer space and the limits of her own brain from atop a lifeguard chair. Keeping the early-morning “heart attack watch” over the elderly swimmers, she fears an imperative to act.
Published in the distinguished Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere, Alyson Foster excels at the story form. Heart Attack Watch, at once tender and fierce, shows her at the peak of her craft.
Heart Attack Watch is built around disasters large and small: those we know enough to fear but for which we can never prepare. The blackout. The car crash. The diagnosis. In these moments of reckoning, Alyson Foster’s characters grow achingly alive.
Julia, the dreamy bus driver of “The Theory of Clouds,” finds herself vulnerable when a group of environmental scientists arrive in her factory town, galvanizing suspicion in her community and in her own home. In “Blight,” Katherine learns she is rapidly going blind, while her husband tries to shield her from another creeping threat. In the title story, Jane, a recent college dropout, ponders the reaches of outer space and the limits of her own brain from atop a lifeguard chair. Keeping the early-morning “heart attack watch” over the elderly swimmers, she fears an imperative to act.
Published in the distinguished Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere, Alyson Foster excels at the story form. Heart Attack Watch, at once tender and fierce, shows her at the peak of her craft.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR HEART ATTACK WATCH:
"Moving…[Foster] creates compelling and unique characters with rich histories in the space of just a few pages…electric…[a] masterful use of tension and language. These short stories are brief windows opening into private moments of hope, pain, and struggle.... A heavy-hitting emotional exploration of the ways lives can change in single moments."
Kirkus Reviews
"A nuanced story collection [...] Foster's seven tales particularly shine when her characters realize the inevitability of their everyday truths."
Booklist
"Sharp, unsentimental descriptions of…difficult situations will keep readers on their toes throughout Foster’s astute collection."
Publishers Weekly
"Heart Attack Watch contains some of the most beautiful stories I have ever read. Alyson Foster’s writing is a study in marvelous contradictions, at once luminous and sharp, ethereal and grounded, lyrical and brash. I loved this book, and you will, too."
Abby Geni, The Lightkeepers
"These stories go up like tinder, sparked by seemingly small incidents that quickly turn to conflagration. Blending sudden violence with moments of surprising beauty, the seven stories in Alyson Foster's Heart Attack Watch are gripping, strange, quietly haunting. Foster has a keen eye for the illuminating oddities of character and contemporary culture: from a sandcastle contest on the shores of Lake Superior to a study of clouds, from Early Bird Swims for the elderly to fine points of astronaut life (space smells coppery; salt and pepper can be dangerous in space). Peopled by a rich array of characters—from a lesbian bus driver to a girl who can walk through treetops, from an Ozark preacher to a former astronaut to a scowling toddler—Foster’s stories dare to walk up the edge of tragedy and look straight down; these stories burn themselves into the mind and the heart."
E.J. Levy, Love, In Theory
"These beautiful stories should not be missed; in addition to the intensity and poetry of the language, there is great wit, a solemn reverence for human life, and a ferocious attention to the natural world."
Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories
"Opening this book is like holding your hand over a hot stove. My advice? Touch the stove. These stories will mark you with their power and verve and grace."
David James Poissant, The Heaven of Animals
Kirkus Reviews
"A nuanced story collection [...] Foster's seven tales particularly shine when her characters realize the inevitability of their everyday truths."
Booklist
"Sharp, unsentimental descriptions of…difficult situations will keep readers on their toes throughout Foster’s astute collection."
Publishers Weekly
"Heart Attack Watch contains some of the most beautiful stories I have ever read. Alyson Foster’s writing is a study in marvelous contradictions, at once luminous and sharp, ethereal and grounded, lyrical and brash. I loved this book, and you will, too."
Abby Geni, The Lightkeepers
"These stories go up like tinder, sparked by seemingly small incidents that quickly turn to conflagration. Blending sudden violence with moments of surprising beauty, the seven stories in Alyson Foster's Heart Attack Watch are gripping, strange, quietly haunting. Foster has a keen eye for the illuminating oddities of character and contemporary culture: from a sandcastle contest on the shores of Lake Superior to a study of clouds, from Early Bird Swims for the elderly to fine points of astronaut life (space smells coppery; salt and pepper can be dangerous in space). Peopled by a rich array of characters—from a lesbian bus driver to a girl who can walk through treetops, from an Ozark preacher to a former astronaut to a scowling toddler—Foster’s stories dare to walk up the edge of tragedy and look straight down; these stories burn themselves into the mind and the heart."
E.J. Levy, Love, In Theory
"These beautiful stories should not be missed; in addition to the intensity and poetry of the language, there is great wit, a solemn reverence for human life, and a ferocious attention to the natural world."
Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories
"Opening this book is like holding your hand over a hot stove. My advice? Touch the stove. These stories will mark you with their power and verve and grace."
David James Poissant, The Heaven of Animals