Do Not Deny Me
Stories
By Jean Thompson
(Simon & Schuster, Paperback, 9781416595632, 304pp.)
Publication Date: June 9, 2009
Other Editions of This Title: eBook
Categories: Short Stories (single author)
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Jean Thompson, heralded as "America's Alice Munro...one of the best contemporary short-story writers" by Kirkus Reviews, delivers twelve exquisite new stories that combine her beloved trademarks of dark humor, seductively sharp wit, and uncanny observations on human nature. Do Not Deny Me is a fictional primer on how Americans live day to day: Thompson's characters -- a middle manager in the midst of midlife crisis, an urban single visiting her best friend turned suburban mother, a grieving woman looking for guidance -- are instantly recognizable in their predicaments, foibles, and sensibilities.
A brilliantly wrought exploration of the myriad circumstances that Americans are experiencing right now, this superlative collection perfectly captures the joys and amusements, trials and sorrows of its fictional inhabitants. Do Not Deny Me should be savored, word by word.
Jean Thompson is the author of Who Do You Love: Stories, a 1999 National Book Award finalist for fiction, and the novels City Boy and Wide Blue Yonder, a New York Times Notable Book and Chicago Tribune Best Fiction selection. She lives in Urbana, Illinois. Visit her at www.jeanthompsononline.com.
"Thompson...delivers a deeply affecting collection that elevates the quotidian to the sublime....explore[s] a bewildering array of experience...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."-- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"[Thompson's] particular grace...may be that her language and approach at first seem so straightforward that it's only partway through reading a story that, like one of her characters, we experience the surprise of a new world unfolding from the ordinary....twilit, elegiac...downright funny, too...Reviewing such a remarkable writer, one's own words can seem too ordinary, but Thompson's talent is such that it can overcome even those limitations."-- Booklist, Starred Review
"I don't deny it. I didn't know Jean Thompson's short fiction until I began reading this new volume of a dozen stories -- and didn't stop. Move over, Alice Munro, this gifted writer now sits in my mind near the throne of the short-story queens and kings of old. She is a master of dialogue, character, pacing and plot, and -- anyone who loves the form will have to cheer about this...Thompson employs spare, plain language, whose rhythms she assembles appropriately for various occasions."-- Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
"[In] Jean Thompson's immensely satisfying new collection...emotional movement is small but powerful....The prose brims with unforced insight."-- Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times
"[Thompson's] latest collection, Do Not Deny Me, is compelling, funny, thought-provoking.... Thompson is an astute observer of the pitfalls of contemporary life, how it isolates and challenges, how it brings out one's worst and best. Her clear-eyed, thought-provoking stories highlight rare, precious moments of grace even as she wisely notes the human tendency toward selfishness, pettiness and general bad behavior."-- Connie Ogle, The Miami Herald
"Thompson...takes us to a disturbing place in this darkly beautiful collection of short stories...Enthusiastically recommended."-- Library Journal
"The experiences of ordinary people...are precisely depicted in this fifth collection from the increasingly accomplished Thompson...who wields illuminating quotidian details and stunningly apt clichés with lethal skill, demonstrates how closely their desires and disappointments parallel and echo our own....Wonderful work from a contemporary master of scrupulous observation, plain statement and unvarnished common sense."-- Kirkus
"[Thompson's] at home anywhere and everywhere. She's at home in the skins of women and men, young and old, losers and winners, tyrants and victims, flakes and dupes and dopes and geniuses and soldiers and bikers and moms. Her characters hail from small towns and big cities. In her sparkling and sometimes heartbreaking short stories...Thompson channels all kinds of personalities, but she does it so artfully, with such supple, unaffected grace."-- Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
"Thompson takes tragic, ordinary figures and lifts them to the sublime in prose that's often as funny as it is sad."-- Jeanne Kolker, Wisconsin State Journal
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