Grade: B
About the author: Jean Thompson is the author of four novels and four collections of short stories. Do Not Deny Me is her most recently published (2009) collection. Kirkus Reviews has compared her to Alice Munro, and she is described as having “dark humor, seductively sharp wit, and uncanny observations about human nature” on her book jacket.
Thompson’s collection of short stories are hit and miss.
Soldiers of Spiritos is a unimaginative portrait of two lonely people-an aging professor and mediocre student, both filled with self-loathing. The characters interact but have no affect on each other, causing the story to be dry, mopey, and generally dull. Thompson does a good job of separating the voices of student and teacher, giving them very distinct tone and vernacular, but goes too far into the ditzy with the student, giving her far too many “like”s between every other word.It’s obvious Thompson is attempting to capture the tone of actual college-aged students, but in print it comes out making not only her characters sound stupid, but she as well.
Wilderness is another unremarkable story. She uses an over-utilized juztaposition by combining a seemingly happy housewife with her long lost cynically divorced friend. It is no shock to find the housewife isn’t happy, and is in fact more trapped than the divorced friend is. It’s a story that’s been told a thousand times, and Thompson doesn’t add much to it.
The only interesting part is how the narrator (cynical divorced friend) interacts with the housewife’s husband. She has a deep hatred of him (mostly pitted in jealousy) but doesn’t explain why. When he drops her off at the airport at the end of the story they have their first real conversation in which the husband tells her (much to her confusion) about his childhood dream of being an architect. It fleshes him out a little, allowing him to have regrets and broken dreams just like the women do. Interjected throughout the story are excerpts from a letter an old boyfriend has sent the narrator. He writes from his cabin in the woods beckoning for her to join him, offering her an unrealistic escape from the life that has so disappointed her. Point taken, but the excerpts don’t add anything worthwhile to the story and only cause a distraction from the main storyline.
Mr. Rat is an amusing story about a bad man in a boring office. He thinks of himself as a “trophy date” for a lonely secretary, and is generally self-obsessed and apathetic to the feelings of those around him. The story read as more of a “men suck” rant than anything else.
In Little Brown Bird Thompson redeems herself somewhat. It is a touching story about an older woman with an empty nest who spends all of her free time avoiding her husband and sewing. She meets a young girl that lives nearby and befriends her, teaching her how to sew and having conversations. The girl, however, comes from a broken home visibly impovershed. The girl even alludes that her father is molesting her stepsister. At the end the father moves away with the girl, and the woman is left feeling alone and guilty, because she didn’t do anything to stop him. The story touches on a range of emotions in the older woman: boredom, guilt, hope, fear. The relationship developed between the woman and girl is realistic, not pushed and not over the top. It’s slow, simple, gentle, and heartbreaking when it ends. The reader feels powerless along with the woman as the possibly child molesting father takes the girl away.
The Liberty Tax (about a young couple’s illegal solution to the recession) and Smash (a man gets into a car accident and imagines the others involved) follow with more of the same unexciting dribble.
Escape, a story about a man who has suffered a stroke and has lost his ability to speak and the use of half his body, is comedically tragic. His wife holds him prisoner in his own house and body as vengeance for his past adultery while he tries desperatly to escape. The hatred the husband and wife feel for each other is stinging and palpable. Here is where Thompson’s supposed “dark humor” pokes it’s head out and says “BOO!”
Treehouse is another portait of a depressed man, nothing more. It’s well written and really gets the man’s depression and boredom of life across, but there’s no meat in this story- just gravy.
The title story, Do Not Deny Me, is about the psychic aftermath the narrator, Julie, feels after her boyfriend’s unexpected death. It was engaging, a little sad, but didn’t dip into the melodramatic cliches that death tends to bring about in so many writers. Julie, who may or may not have a psychic link with the dead, rejects her possible “gift” and therefore rejects the perceived ghost of her boyfriend who has been haunting her since his death.
There were some highlights in this collection, but Thompson disappoints with her generic storylines and characters.
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