The experiences of ordinary people making their claims to be
understood and respected are precisely depicted in this fifth
collection from the increasingly accomplished Thompson (Throw Like
a Girl, 2007, etc.).The characters in these dozen stories are
people we all know, or can easily imagine. When a lonely woman
accepts a married friend's Thanksgiving invitation, she becomes
enmeshed in a domestic hornet's nest ("Wilderness"). An office
worker ("Mr. Rat"), who thinks he's God's gift to the female
colleague with a crush on him, first sees himself as a newly
compassionate and sensitive person, then realizes with both chagrin
and relief that he is "a genius at self-preservation." Wives
betrayed by dishonest or indifferent spouses, husbands and fathers
smothered by family responsibilities, an accident victim who learns
he isn't the center of the universe, a bereaved young woman
initially comforted and eventually terrorized by her new psychic
"friend" (in the eerie title story) - all first swim into our ken
as odd, unlikely specimens, but then Thompson, who wields
illuminating quotidian details and stunningly apt cliches with
lethal skill, demonstrates how closely their desires and
disappointments parallel and echo our own. Three stories are
especially impressive. A man enfeebled and speechless following a
stroke yearns for a means of "Escape" from his embittered,
condescending wife, who unintentionally (and ironically) provides
it. In "Her Untold Story," a continuation of "Wilderness," a
divorced suburban mom seeks a new life, taking up jogging, then
risking a blind date and meeting a "stranger" who's as much a part
of her rejected past as her infuriating ex. In the lovely
"Treehouse," a disillusioned dad finds in the title project a
refuge from a world "grown too large...too cluttered with
bewilderment and pain. Now he had made it small enough to fit
inside himself."Wonderful work from a contemporary master of
scrupulous observation, plain statement and unvarnished common
sense. (Kirkus Reviews)
When Jean Thompson--"America's Alice Munro" (Kirkus Reviews,
starred review)--is telling stories, "You cannot put the book down"
(The Seattle Times), and her superlative new collection, Do Not
Deny Me, is one to be savored, word by word.
- Award-winning storyteller gaining popularity: Jean Thompson's
short fiction has been honored by the National endowment for the
Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation; Who Do You Love: Stories was a
National Book Award finalist for fiction and was promoted by David
Sedaris during his own lecture tour; and Throw Like a Girl: Stories
was a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle
Best Book of the Year. The collection is also in its sixth
printing, as Thompson's longstanding critical acclaim crosses over
into a popular following. Do Not Deny Me is perfectly positioned to
gain an even wider audience.
- Do Not Deny Me: Here is a title that demands--and
commands--attention in and of itself. Yet Thompson's latest
collection is no literary dare, delivering as it does twelve
dazzling new stories that together offer, with wit, humor, and
razor-sharp perception, a fictional primer on how Americans live
day to day. In Thompson's writing, The New York Times Book Review
has noted, "some of the biggest satisfactions happen line by line,
thanks to Thompson's effortless ability to tip her prose into the
universal." Thompson succeeds as "one of our most astute
diagnosticians of contemporary experience" (The Boston Globe).
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