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BOOKS
The first story in Jean Thompson's exquisite new short-story collection portrays a university professor well aware he's past his prime. He's tired of his work and frustrated by the preening, younger scholars who cause him to feel like a relic. To make himself feel better, the professor secretly writes a sci-fi novel featuring his departmental colleagues as "grotesque and menacing aliens, androids, and intergalactic creeps."
Nothing comes of this sci-fi creation in the story. Thompson's intent is to explore how and why we feel inadequate. To that point, she juxtaposes with the professor one of his student's, a girl who feels she can't keep up with her peers and is of no interest to anyone.
What's so gripping about this story and the other 11 in the collection is the simplicity with which Thompson describes and casts her characters. It's as if she took a pencil and paper and -- while we described our friends and family -- she drew them with words. Her characters are husbands, wives, best friends and corporate managers struggling with distressing circumstances in a way we could imagine ourselves or our friends and family struggling with them.
For example, the title story is about a girl whose boyfriend dies unexpectedly after being taken to the hospital for what seems like a minor ailment. Months pass and her desire to connect with him takes her to psychics.
In another story a woman watches her neighbors from the window of her sewing room and suspects the man is sexually abusing one of the little girls. The woman befriends the oldest girl, who reveals what might be going on, but the woman can't be sure.
I enjoyed spending time with Thompson's characters not only because they are likable and sincere, but also because Thompson doesn't throw dramatic curve balls for shock value, so as to create a memorable artistic punch instead of telling a good story. Instead, Thompson effortlessly tells good stories with characters that find their way to, if not resolution of their circumstances, then at least, peace.
Thompson's characters are simply yet powerfully imagined creations because they don't disappear at the last page, rather they linger.
Like the man who builds a tree house in his backyard for himself. It's a place where he can be quiet, looking up into the sky through a leafy canopy. His family worries and complains about what he's doing, how he's changed, but like many everyday people in fiction and real life, he's just in the confusing beginnings of a new way forward.
Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson is published by Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. I'm Kassie Rose.
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