Who Do You Love – Stories
1999
In this acclaimed collection, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, Jean Thompson limns the lives of ordinary people — a lonely social worker, a down-and-out junkie, a divorced cop on the night shift — to extraordinary effect. With wisdom and sympathy and spare eloquence, she writes of their inarticulate longings for communion and grace.
Yet even the saddest situations are imbued with Thompson¹s characteristic humor and a wry glimmer of hope. With Who Do You Love, readers will discover a writer with rare insight into the resiliency of the human spirit and the complexities of love.
“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 New York Times Book Review
“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
“The best pieces in this collection are as good as it gets in contemporary fiction. Jean Thompson has long been a writer much admired by other writers; perhaps Who Do You Love will bring her the wider recognition she deserves.”
— Carol Anshaw, Newsday
“Luminous and heartbreaking…[Thompson is] among the best short-fiction writers working today….With a clearheaded compassion that allows the stories to grow up around them in unpredictable, satisfying ways.”
— Jim Tushinski, San Francisco Bay Guardian Literary Supplement