Do Not Deny Me

Starred review from April 6, 2009
National Book Award–finalist Thompson (for Who Do You Love
) delivers a deeply affecting collection that elevates the quotidian to the sublime. In the title story, Julia, a young woman “embarrassed” for “people talked about guardian angels or spirit guides,” visits a psychic after her boyfriend dies. Faced with the ability to access the world beyond, she recoils sharply. The collection goes on to explore a bewildering array of experience, from a young wife denying her husband’s white-collar crimes in “Liberty Tax” to the concerned neighbor of “Little Brown Bird” who is powerless to help a little girl being molested by her father. In “Escape,” a man who has suffered a stroke finds himself at the mercy of his increasingly abusive wife. Determined to get away from her, he’s pleasantly shocked when she solves his problem in a way he never counted on. Thompson immerses readers in details and emotions so consuming and convincing that the inane vagaries of modern life can take on near mythic importance. This collection shows the confidence and power of a writer in her prime.

Starred review from May 15, 2009
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 clichs 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.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2009
Thompson ("Who Do You Love") takes us to a disturbing place in this darkly beautiful collection of short storiesher fifth. We see lives falling apart, relationships soured and occasionally violent, and hope distant and elusive. The characters, youngish suburbanites who are all well depicted, are often drawn to each other by a terrible loneliness, but even their most basic attempts at human connection usually fail. Some fail for predictable reasons (pettiness, jealousy, meanness), others for reasons that are more complex and perhaps ultimately unexplainable. VERDICT There is a tragic sensibility at work here (a Thompson hallmark) and a keen sense of how precarious and fragile love and friendship are. Thompson notes in the ironically titled "How We Brought the Good News" that the world is "flawed in unexpected ways," and she helps us understand the pathos and heartbreak of that discovery. Enthusiastically recommended.Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2009
In her newest collection of short stories, Jean Thompson (Throw Like a Girl, 2007)writes about people who have suffered a loss or feel a sense of loss;about people seeking a late-life second start;about peoplefeeling suddenly unstuck or dislocated in a familiar environment. This is the stuff of many contemporary short stories, yet Thompsons handling of it is anything but quotidian. Herparticular grace, however, may be that her language and approach at first seem sostraightforward that its only partway through reading a story that, like one of her characters, we experience the surprise of a new world unfolding from the ordinary. These are all very fine stories, but the twilit, elegaic Treehouse is almost unsettling in its ability to bring us inside a man who felt strange to himself. Not that Thompson is all twilight: she can be downright funny, too, as evidenced by the war between stroke victim Hurley and his uncaring caretaker wife in Escape. For all her art, she never forgets the first dictum of storytelling: stuff happens, usually surprising stuff. Reviewing such a remarkable writer, ones own words can seem too ordinary, but Thompsons talent is such that it can overcome even those limitations.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)