Populated by characters as frank as their midwestern settings, What You鈥檝e Been Missing, Janet Desaulniers鈥檚 debut collection, explores the unsettling moments when ordinary life ceases to exist. Parents, confused by their five-year-old鈥檚 refusal to sit up in her chair, lift her blouse to find she鈥檚 been beaten. A woman returns from a shopping trip just in time to see her husband kissing a young co-worker. A young husband constructs an elaborate and romanticized version of his new marriage and then ruins it in one gesture. These singular moments propel each person on a journey beyond the realm of everyday existence.
Vividly portraying the possible horrors and detours that can mark anyone鈥檚 life, Desaulniers beautifully captures the vast and often conflicting emotions that humans endure at times of loss and sorrow鈥攍oneliness, pain, desperation, desire. Yet this balletic push and pull of emotions will challenge, wound, and ultimately enlighten her characters, transporting them to a place beyond individual sorrow.
At times unbearably heartbreaking, What You鈥檝e Been Missing is not just another set of stories about bad things happening to good people. At its heart, this award-winning collection is about people continuing to talk鈥攔ather than shutting down鈥攁s bad things happen to them. As the recently divorced Liza thinks in 鈥淭he Good Fight鈥: 鈥淲ords do ease us. They comfort us. Maybe they protect us in a way, rescue us from the agony of what our bodies feel.鈥
鈥淧itch-perfect dialogue; a deft shaping hand; brave, lip-of-the-grave humor; an aching, honest love for her characters: these are the achievements of Janet Desaulniers, who has written a handbook on the damage and, sometimes, balm we offer one another. Her collection will break your heart.鈥濃擣rederick Busch
鈥淛anet Desaulniers is a stunning writer who traverses the coarse terrain of real life鈥攏ot story life, but real love and loss鈥攊n brisk, elegant scenes that are truthful and instructive, intelligent and uplifting.鈥濃擬att Klam
鈥淚n every story by Janet Desaulniers you arrive at a moment鈥攁lways unexpected, never accidental鈥攚hen you realize that the neck in the noose is yours and that you鈥檙e gasping at the terrifying and necessary news that, good Lord, love is the crooked thing. If you've not been reading Desaulniers鈥檚 stories over the years, What You鈥檝e Been Missing is fiction wicked and raw with rue. This is a collection both sly and impolite, a book to thrust upon strangers, a book made right about all that does go wrong in our tribe.鈥濃擫ee K. Abbott, author of Living after Midnight and Wet Places at Noon, Winner of the 2004 John Simmons Short Fiction Award
