Throw Like A Girl: Stories (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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 plans to wrest control of their life from husbands, boyfriends and mothers. Kelly Ann Pardee, a high school dropout stuck at home with a child while her army grunt husband is sent to the Middle East, wants to be a warrior, too. The teenage Jessie in "The Five Senses" has run off to Florida with an older man she is beginning to realize is violent and scary, and yet she is disappointed that her new fugitive existence isn't more exciting than her upper-middle-class life. Older women in these stories have been through the mill—of marriage, adultery, child-rearing. Mid-40s Melanie of "A Normal Life" marries Chad after a long affair, only to wonder if this new version of her lover is one she wants. In "Holy Week," seething sales agent Olivia Snow is too worn down by her job and single mom drudgery to upgrade her "subemployed musician" boyfriend or realize how at risk her 17-year-old daughter is. Thompson's talent is on full display. (June)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Thompson now has written as many story collections as novels (four and four, that is), and it is primarily as a first-rate story writer that her name is being made. Her latest collection, gathering an even dozen stories, extends the realization that she is a sensitive, humorous, very informed chronicler--no, singer--of ordinary people in ordinary towns who face ordinary life issues, primarily relationships in familial and sexual forms (in other words, situations in which we all find ourselves). But Thompson's strength and attraction lie in her ability to spot the unique features of any of these situations. It wouldn't be wrong to also call her the poet of these unglamorous lives, given her pithy, poignant, yet often beautiful prose style. "Lost" may not be the best story in the collection, but it is exemplary. From the vantage point of years later, a grown woman narrates in the first person (her voice pitch-perfect for her character) about when she was 20 and had a good time with a "bad" boy. Time has passed quickly for her: "That quick, there goes your life, like a black-haired boy on a motorcycle, looking back until he's out of sight." Stories for any fiction reader. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 291 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416541829
• ISBN-13: 978-1416541820
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #159,526 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stories That Strike The Right Notes, July 10, 2007

By	Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It's difficult to write a short story collection that captures attention. Alice Munro, Jhumpa Lahari, Margaret Atwood, Peter Ho Davies are a few writers that come to mind who do it well. Now I can add another one -- Jean Thompson.

Her stories are about women (not "phenomenal women", like another reviewer wrote)...just women who have gotten caught up in life. Some are emotionally unhealthy, some are finding their way, some are learning how to navigate life. The author is making no political statements here. Instead, she is taking us into their worlds -- and what worlds they are.

These are REAL characters who speak REAL dialogue and seem amazingly REAL. The little simple details bring them to life. Perhaps the best way to judge a short story collection is to ask yourself, "Do I care about what happens next? When I put this book down at night, do I want to pick it up again in the morning?" To these questions, I answer a resounding "yes." Each story sparkles; each captures attention. I'm glad I discovered this writer.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Comments on "The Brat" from Jean Thompson's Book Throw Like a Girl, July 6, 2007

By	Barbara Jeanne Wilson (Chesterfield, MO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Comments on "The Brat."

"The Brat," Jean Thompson's first in the series of short stories in Throw Like a Girl is absolutely chilling. The reader is given the thoughts of 12-year-old Iris, a strange and rebellious little girl, whose best friend is an obese boy named Rico. Misery loves company, and these two children really complement one another.

Iris seems to hate everything and everybody. She is out of control -- a fearless rebel. She isn't remotely concerned about getting into trouble for being rude to her mother, nor does she seem to care what will happen to her after she, Rico and Barry write and deliver death threat notes to several of their classmates. Later, she is not worried about reprisals after she matter-of-factly kicks her brother in his private parts. Iris seems to be missing a conscience.

When the Jovanovich brothers come looking for a fight after school, Iris and Rico lock themselves in Rico's house. Iris isn't concerned about the Jovanoviches breaking into the house; she just wonders: "how hard you'd have to stab somebody to get a knife all the way through their clothes."

When Rico finds his mother's gun and gives it to Iris, she immediately begins thinking about whom she could shoot. She is on the second floor of Rico's house, and she points the loaded gun out the window at Mr. Ortiz (who has climbed high into a tree that has fallen on a garage next door to dismantle it), but then Iris decides that she likes Mr. Ortiz and won`t shoot him. Later, she calmly considers taking the gun home and shooting her mother or her brother. Iris displays ominous, sociopathic thought patterns, and her final act in the story is to unload the gun and throw bullets from the second floor of Rico's house at Jerry Jovanovich. The bullets clank loudly on the guttering, and Iris shouts "Bang! Bang!" The sudden noise and shouting may have startled Mr. Ortiz into losing his balance and falling.

The last sentence in the story is quite unique, and the author may have summed up the entire story in these few words: "In the corner of her eye, she (Iris) saw Mr. Ortiz struggle briefly to keep his balance, then topple over and fall with his arms outstretched and the ropes curling and snapping around him like banners." Iris is only vaguely aware of the effect of her thoughts and actions on others. And if she does know, she doesn't care. Mr. Ortiz, who represents society at large, is only concentrating on the job at hand and is oblivious to any danger posed by children, until it is too late to save himself and falls -- his tethers pulled loose -- his intentions (banners) waving meaninglessly in the air. The next generation, says Thompson, may be our downfall.

Thompson presents a vivid portrait of our current society, with all of its potential dangers and downdrafts. She concentrates specifically on our adolescents. The young are wandering through life untethered, she says. The single parents are working and have little time to engage in any meaningful parenting. The school officials are also fairly ineffective at solving the children's problems, and little communication occurs between the parents and the school counselors. Thompson presents a template for the reader to consider as reasons for the school shootings in this country of late. Using a thin line of cynical, icy humor, Jean Thompson lifts the camouflage of rationalization and spreads the truth out before us. I think it's an accurate, albeit a disturbing portrayal.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The wit and black humor of the title are splendidly sinister, September 6, 2007

By	Feminist Review blog "various writers" (worldwide) - See all my reviews

After being asked what she wanted for her readers to take away from Throw Like a Girl, Jean Thompson answered that she hoped they appreciate the "transforming power of literature, how can it remove us from the everyday world and let us see with new eyes." And this book does just that: it takes us away from the everyday world and then painfully drops us back with the suspicion that this fiction is actually very real.

The horrors of normalcy and the tedium of a common life are the forces that drive the majority of the characters in these twelve stories; our "heroines" are far from the romantic or ladylike ilk, but instead more like tough, strong and violent. On the opposite side stand the men in these accounts, mostly unsuccessful and lost, they portray what nobody wants and what most end up getting.

In "The Brat," a spooky but familiar story about teenage anger Iris, the twelve year old outcast main character that is not "pretty or smart or nicey-nice," hates everybody and everything, and we hate her; we hate her and we understand her because we have been there. This character, as most in this collection, is like we were, are or will be. All of these women have the urge to live, to act on their thoughts and to get what they really want, and we know that getting what you really want is a trap. We know that if we go for the cheese it will cut our heads off, and we do it anyways. Jean Thompson is the story teller of our own collective story.

Lust and boredom force Mel in "A Normal Life" to leave her children and husband to marry the man she was having a hot and heavy affair with just to go around in the circle of dissatisfaction, where she ceases being a "sexy siren" and instead becomes "just another nagging, squawking wife."

"The Family Barcus" analyzes the life of a perfect American family, with an obsessively optimistic father who eventually gives up on life. It's told in a first-person velvety prose that slips into the brain and tightly wraps it for a long time.

The wit and black humor of the title are splendidly sinister. Throw Like a Girl is a phenomenal account, and when you read it, you'll understand why it bears the title of the collection.