Jean Thompson - Reviews

jean thompson

REVIEWS

What Literay Blogs Are Saying About Throw Like a Girl
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Praise for Do Not Deny Me

"Move over, Alice Munro, this gifted writer now sits in my mind near the throne of the short-story queens and kings of old. [Thompson] is a master of dialogue, character, pacing and plot, and—anyone who loves the form will have to cheer about this…And the dialogue—pitch perfect.” Read more...

-- Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

“The prose brims with unforced insight…[an] immensely satisfying new collection.”
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-- Los Angeles Times

"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 clichés 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

"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 people feeling suddenly unstuck or dislocated in a familiar environment. This is the stuff of many contemporary short stories, yet Thompson’s handling of it is anything but quotidian. Her particular grace, however, 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. 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, one’s own words can seem too ordinary, but Thompson’s talent is such that it can overcome even those limitations."

-- Keir Graff, Booklist

“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 [who] 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.”

-- Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

Praise for Throw Like a Girl

“Some of the collection’s biggest satisfactions happen line by line, thanks to Thompson’s effortless ability to tip her prose into the universal....It’s a testament to Thompson’s writing that she’s able to wrest so much variety and entertainment from a …literary landscape.”

-- New York Times Book Review

“[Thompson] is a sensitive, humorous, very informed chronicler—no, singer—of ordinary people in ordinary towns who face ordinary life issues, primarily relationships in familial and sexual forms. But it is Thompson’s ability to spot the special feature of any such situation to the individual involved that is her strength and attraction. It wouldn’t be wrong to also call her the poet of these unglamorous lives, given her pithy, poignant, yet often beautiful prose style.”

-- Booklist
(starred review)

"In her fourth collection of gritty, grueling stories, [Thompson] emerges as something very much like Alice Munro. Each of the 12 stories is precisely fashioned, distinguished by complex and unsparing characterizations and studded with metaphors made from the stuff of everyday life...and wry acknowledgements of the sheer drugery of living. In [her best stories], Thompson rivals Munro at her greatest. One of the best contemporary short-story writers in peak form."

-- Kirkus Review
(starred review)

"Twelve stories trace the arc of womanhood from pubescent gloom to end-of-life regrets in this moody but compassionate collection ... Thompson packs a gallon’s worth of wisdom into each quart-size gem.”

-- People Magazine

"In stirring prose and masterfully funny repartee, Thompson writes from somewhere inside her characters, filling them with urges and ambitions that bubble up and set off ripples of longing. These stories are insistent that children aren’t unwise and that we often gain vitality as we age. Most of all, they remind you of people in your own life—and make you feel like you know them just a little better."

-- Elle Magazine

"A hard-hitting latest collection of stories ... Thompson's talent is on full display."

-- Publisher's Weekly

Praise for Who Do You Love

"With spare eloquence, Thompson surveys the lives of emotionally dislocated people craving connection, but infuses even the saddest situation with humor and a wry glimmer of hope. The fifteen stories in this collection ring with an unpretentious integrity and a knowledge of human complexities."

-- Publishers Weekly
Best Books of 1999

"Like Raymond Carver, Thompson is fascinated by the sudden and unlikely communion of people. Her characters vary -- there are junkies, cops, women who've lost men to drugs, religion and everything else, but she never condescends to them, no matter how hungry their hearts are, no matter how many screws they have loose....Her fiction may never make her rich, but Who Do You Love is still a gold mine."

-- Jeff Giles, Newsweek

"A quietly devastating book...few fiction writers working today have more successfully rendered the sensation of solid ground suddenly melting away, pinpointing that instant when the familiar present is swallowed up by an always encroaching past or voided future."

-- Katherine Dieckmann,
The New York Times Book Review

Praise for City Boy

"A cage-rattling, profoundly satisfying book."

-- Pam Houston, O, The Oprah Magazine

"Mesmerizing...City Boy abounds in...mordant wit and keen psychological observations."

-- Boston Herald

"The dark and punishing terrain of the broken human heart is flawlessly charted by Jean Thompson in City Boy."

-- Baltimore Sun

Praise for Wide Blue Yonder

"Detonates a whole fireworks of happy endings -- flares of hope and success so exuberant that the book almost seems to require a warning label."

-- Lisa Zeidner
The New York Times Book Review

"Wide Blue Yonder offers precisely the kind of beautifully crafted, intelligent, imaginative writing that serious readers crave....Each sentence deserves to be appreciated."

-- Deirdre Donahue, USA Today

"Wide Blue Yonder reaffirms Thompson's stature as one of our most lucid and insightful writers."

-- Andrew Roe,
San Francisco Chronicle