Jean Thompson, Author . Simon & Schuster $24 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7432-0512-2
Domestic tensions deflate into screwball hijinks in this pleasant, if somewhat toothless, debut novel by the author of Who Do You Love: Stories, a 1999 National Book Award finalist for fiction. Set over one summer in Springfield, Ill., the novel...
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Jean Thompson, Author . Simon & Schuster $24 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7432-4282-0
Thompson (Wide Blue Yonder
, etc.) dissects the breakup of a marriage in cool, convincing detail, capturing the fraught day-to-day dynamics of conjugal life in this neatly crafted novel. Jack Orlovich and Chloe Chase, both in their mid-20s, have...
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Jean Thompson, Author . Simon & Schuster $13 (291p) ISBN 978-1-4165-4182-0
The women protagonists of Thompson's hard-hitting latest collection of stories (The Gasoline Wars
; 1999 NBA finalist Who Do You Love
) have, like the young army wife of "It Would Not Make Me Tremble to See Ten Thousand Fall," secret...
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Jean Thompson, Author . Simon & Schuster $14 (292p) ISBN 978-1-4165-9563-2
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...
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Jean Thompson, Simon & Schuster, $25 (336p) ISBN 978-1-4391-7588-0
Bookended by two wars—Vietnam and Iraq—Thompson's third novel (after the collection Do Not Deny Me) sketches the travails of an Iowa family over three decades. Matriarch Audrey neatly sums up the episodic novel's grand theme: "she'd been born into...
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Jean Thompson, Author, JR. Arthur Thompson, Author Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) $23 (320p) ISBN 978-0-15-100416-4
Lost souls populate the bleak terrain of Thompson's collection of 15 remarkable stories, most of which have appeared previously in prestigious magazines and prize collections. These hapless folk live precariously, seemingly trapped in an endless...
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Jean Thompson. Penguin/Blue Rider, $26.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-399-15871-1
Thompson's thoughtful new novel ponders the sins we commit in the name of love and our capacity for compassion. The "detached" life of San Francisco bay area nurse Christie, divorced and in her thirties, is thrown into motion when Mrs. Foster, a...
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Jean Thompson. Penguin/Blue Rider, $25.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-399-17058-4
In this spooky, enthralling, and morally complex collection, National Book Award finalist Thompson (Who Do You Love) reimagines classic fairy tales, such as “Cinderella” and “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” as eight realistic narratives of family,...
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Jean Thompson. Penguin/Blue Rider, $27 (432p) ISBN 978-0-399-57381-1
National Book Award–finalist Thompson (Who Do You Love) illustrates the sometimes-ugly complexities of women’s friendships in an account of a decades-long relationship between two very different women. After graduation, college friends Jane and...
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Jean Thompson. Simon & Schuster, $26 (336p) ISBN 978-1-5011-9436-8
Thompson’s incisive, intricate novel centers on three generations of women living in a small, unnamed Midwestern college town. Evelyn Wise worked as a history professor during WWII, and after the war married Andrew. Evelyn’s greatest happiness in...
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Jean Thompson. Algonquin, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-64375-156-6
Thompson (A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl) intriguingly explores the contours of the literary world through the eyes of an outsider. Carla Sawyer, a restless Northern California landscaper in her 20s, is stretched thin by conflicting advice. Her...
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