Another Read.

Still getting my bearings after a couple weeks in and out of town so my posts will tend toward the short and sweet for the next few days. Case in point: today.   I am just going to point you toward another great read.  Finished this book a couple weeks ago after two frenzied late nights of reading.  I love that.

So below, is yet another of my amazon reviews.  If you like it, click over and give me a thumbs up.

Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson

One of the best collection of American short stories I have read in recent years, Jean Thompson’s Do Not Deny Me highlights the complicated internal worlds Americans’ inhabit, even in the most prosaic settings. I have not previously read anything by Jean Thompson, but was shocked I haven’t come across her work before, given the weight and talent these stories exhibited. Where have I been? Why haven’t I come across her before?

No matter. I have now.

Her stories, quintessentially American, focus on characters that make up middle class America: a single, middle-aged, woman visiting her married house-wife college friend at Thanksgiving; an aging English professor who is being edged out by up-and-coming theory obsessed colleagues; a successful salesman who counters his mid-life crisis by building a tree-house. On the surface these stories sound flat, but Thompson picks away at that surface to reveal the supreme aching loneliness that swims beneath. Isolation runs through all her stories as a constant current, but sometimes her characters are able to counter this by finding meaning and small, measured pleasures within the banality of everyday life.

Rather shorter version of my feelings on this collection would be as follows: Read it late into the night. Finished it in 2 days. Not a light-hearted summer read,BUT an exceptionally satisfying read. Highly recommended.

About these ads