Jenny and the Jaws of Life: Short Stories

by Jincy Willett, David Sedaris

In these wonderfully funny and poignant stories, Willett's eccentric, complex characters think and do the unconventional. Soft, euphonic women gradually grow old; weak, unhappy men confront love and their own mortality; and abominable children desperately try to grow up with grace. With a unique voice and dry humor, Willett gives us a new insight into human existence, showing us those specific moments in relationships when life suddenly becomes visible.

Critically acclaimed when it was first published in 1987, Jenny and the Jaws of Life is being brought back due to popular demand. It's a timeless collection filled with a certain freshness and wit that ring just as loudly today.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Humor, Contemporary, Literature, Book Club, Adult

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1987

About the author

From the author's website: "An aging, bitter, unpleasant woman living in Escondido, California, who spends her days parsing the sentences of total strangers and her nights teaching and writing. Sometimes, late at night, in the dark, she laughs inappropriately." This is also the short bio on her character, Amy Gallup, on her blog in "The Writing Class."

Reviews

[christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an unrequited beef with Jincy Willett that dates back to weeks ago when she wrote in the NYT's Book Review that Sarah Dunn's flaming piece of chick lit "Secrets to Happiness" was not, in fact, chick lit. This, of course, led to me researching the reviewer to find ways to extract from her the $23.99 she owes me for lying. Unfortunately, when I can across her own list of novels and short stories, I was surprised to find that Willett's stuff looked like stuff I might want to read.

With her most recent novel "The Writing Class" in that awkward pubescent phase where it is about to morph from hardcover to soft cover, I wasn't able to find it at any of my local bookstores. I did find "Jenny and the Jaws of Life," a short story compilation from the 1980s, re-released in modern times to include a testimonial from David Sedaris on the cover. I was all "Game on, Jincy." [What a great name, by the way.:]

She redeemed herself. Tenfold.

These 13 stories suggest that Jincy Willett knows people better than people know themselves. She has an eye like a microscope fitted with a camera and shoved into a colon. She writes about those moments where you think you are just tugging a loose thread, but it inadvertently turns into a school bus crash. Her voice is quietly satiric and darkly funny. If you had lunch with her voice, split the bill, ran some errands and then made dinner, it would take until you were dicing the onions to finally wonder: Wait. Was she making fun of me?

My favorites included "The Haunting of the Linguards," the story of that perfectly-synced, super-human, couple, whose relationship crashes after the woman sees a ghost, resurrecting the only argument the couple has ever had. "Melinda Falling" starts with a man observing a woman as she takes a tumble down the stairs at a party, and immediately falls in love with this imperfect klutz; In "Under the Bed" a woman's response to being raped doesn't match the way her friends think she should respond; "Mr. Lazenbee" stars a socially awkward sixth-grade girl who thinks the wrong things are funny. She accuses her aunt of making her "feel funny," calls a hotline when her dad spanks her, and tries to seduce the school janitor. This is uncomfortably squirmy brilliance.

"The Best of Betty" was the story that really made me realize the quality of what I was reading. It's a take on the advice columnist -- Ann Landers, Dear Abby, whoever. The story is comprised of letters and responses. At first I was like "C'mon, Jincy, you can do better than this. These letters are blah." But then, but THEN, you realize that they are blah on purpose. That she is getting to the tired minutia of these columns. And then everything explodes.

I'd say all is forgiven between Jincy and me.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just got this book for $1, and already I am happy and sad about that. Why didn't I pay more?

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The term "brilliant" is thrown around a lot, and not always accurately. But in this case, it's very apt. This is just brilliant. "Justine Laughs at Death" was downright disturbing, what with the allusions to rape, murder, and torture, and the weird bird imagery and cryptic phone calls. But very good. And "Best of Betty" was really funny. The whole thing is very witty, and I think Willitt is up there with Amy Hempel as a short-story writer who uses the minimum amount of words to their maximum awesome-potential. Also, though this collection was first published in 1987, it doesn't feel dated at all. The stories, I think, have kind of a timelessness to them. Basically, there's nothing not to like about this.

Edit: Oh wait. ONE thing. This edition had typos, for some weird reason. Like not so much spelling ones (there were like.. 2 of those, which I excused) but mostly there were frequently periods missing from ends of sentences. I could tell it was the end of the sentence because the next word was capital and it made sense with the flow. However.. it was kind of confusing. And unnerving. How can someone repeatedly forget periods?? Hm.

[Mintwitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had a good run of books over the past week or so. Jenny and the Jaws of Life was so good that I'm tempted to take a break from reading and revel in the goodness. Instead, I will reread Jenny...

Short stories are difficult. They are difficult to read and they are extremely difficult to write. Few hit the "sweet spot," the point at which there are precisely enough words to complete the idea, not a single word too many or too few, and each perfectly suited to it's purpose. Jincy Willet has a gift, hitting the sweet spot every time.

The collection is introduced by David Sedaris, who assures the reader that Jenny... is "the funniest collection of stories I've ever read." Mr. Sedaris is a strange man. I would not call Willet funny. There are amusing moments in the stories, but Willet's humor is not the sort that causes one to laugh out loud; instead, one experiences the shocked recognition of self, of shared humanity, our common foibles and frailties.

[Joshua Gross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an intense collection of short stories. All of them resonated and meant something, all of them had depth and complexity, and it made it a little difficult to read at work because I'd finish one story and just have to move on to the next one without time to recover. Jincy Willet is amazing, and her stories show that. She has a perfect understanding of human nature and of human interaction.

These stories occasionally have a feel about them that is specific to that time period and that generation, the characters are well done and complicated, and once again Jincy Willet's writing make me wonder what kind of person she is.

My favorite stories were 'Mr. Lazenbee' and 'The Best of Betty.' The rest are all my second favorites.

[Sarah Hine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because in the forward, David Sedaris explains how he considers this book a true gem which help shaped his own literary voice. Using basic logic: I love David Sedaris. David Sedaris loves Jincy Willett. Hence, I will love it too. And I did love it. Not because it made me burst out laughing while riding the train to work (which is why I love Sedaris), but because it had so many great turns of phrase, twisted and rich plot lines, and disturbing but absorbing characters. Willett's writing and sense of humor is dark, very dark, and you can really see where Sedaris might have drawn from it in creating his own style. This is excellent short story writing.

[LooseLips · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is simply one of the most under recognized, hugely intense, beautifully written books i have ever read. i feel lucky to have discovered jincy willet (although david sedaris might've found her first) and recommend everyone read this book once or twice a year for the rest of your life.

[Chance Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jincy Willett's short stories are interesting in that very few of them have a clear arc, or a complete plot, instead it's just a bunch of things happen to a character, and now make something of it. I guess that's every story, when you think about it, but hers even more so. The last story, "The Jaws of Life," addresses this in its opening line: "According to Hannah, real life just happens, whereas stories make sense. When you put real life in print, she says, you show it up for the pointless mess it really is." That's what a lot of these stories feel like, real life in print.

Which is absurd, considering the stories are about a philandering wine salesman, a "bad seed" type teenage girl attempting to seduce an old man who looks like a vulture, and a woman who sees a ghost. There's a Flannery O'Connor vibe, with some of the most ghastly images like this one -- The Mango girl [a cardboard cutout[, her sharp-edged hat crumpled by Pillbeam's head, splattered with Pillbeam's blood, grinned at him from the backseat. The upholstery, front and back, reeked of fermented tropical fruit -- or with Jenny, who is finally able to fall down without making a joke about it, and so she just stays there as are son gets more and more embarrassed and frustrated.
And there are lots of evil children, murdering their parents or making fake sex abuse claims.

Willett sees people as wanting to save themselves more than others, even when they're in the process of saving others -- "If I didn't do it right I would be the guy who didn't save the kid. So really I was brave because I was a coward."

My favorite two stories are the first two, "Julie in the Funhouse", about a man's sister who is murdered by her own children, and "The Haunting of the Linguards." I can see why David Sedaris likes Willet. The first reads like a Sedaris essay, if one of his sisters was brutally murdered by her own children. There's emotion coupled with a humorous detachment.

But the second story is my absolutely favorite. In this one, a practical husband and wife couple with a perfect marriage (their own fight started with the phrase "Look, I don't want Grape-Nuts" is torn apart when the wife sees a ghost. It's like that Nicole Kidman movie, Birth. She knows what she saw, even though it's impossible. She can't prove it to her husband, and being Mr. Science, he wants proof, but "she had nothing on her side but experience." The two get into an interesting debate about this with a fellow married couple, and one of them points out to the husband, "What if you had seen the ghost? Then where would you be? It seems to me that you've put your fait in something pretty iffy, if that is all it would take to make your whole world fall apart."

But it falls apart anyway. Everything is in entropy in these stories.

Also, I have to note that these stories were published in 1987, yet they mention thigh gap ("thighs so slender there's a space between them at the top"), which I thought was a relatively recent invention.

[Nitya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recommended this one to my book club after reading about David Sedaris' rave review of this book, which was actually first published in 1987, and then resurrected and reprinted after Sedaris wrote about how much he loved the book. Being a big Sedaris fan, it seemed logical that I would love Jenny and the Jaws of Life.
Have you ever invited someone to watch a movie that you absolutely loved, and then watched it with them, wondering the whole time, if really the movie wasn't that great after all? I felt like that while reading this book, knowing my book club members were reading along, and probably wincing while doing so.
What was Sedaris thinking? He thought the stories were hilarious, and touching. While I thought the stories were interesting, I found very little humor in them, and I have a pretty good sense of humor.
As for being touching,I don't think so either. It is possible, that were I reading the book without having convinced my book club to read it, that I would have seen it differently. As it was, the one book club member who did like the book was absent the night we met, and everyone else strongly disliked it. Complaints ranged from the stories were depressing, to it wasn't funny, to it was just plain weird.
I will probably peruse Jenny and the Jaws of Life again to see what is what. Curious what other reviewers have said. Maybe I'll read several and see.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

In his introduction, David Sedaris piles tons of hyperbolic praise on this collection, including calling it the funniest collection of stories ever, which just ain't the case. Most of the stories aren't actually funny nor are meant to be.

This is dark, self-conscious satire, of an annoying eighties vintage that feels very much of its time and the many varied collections published during that recent golden age of short fiction. But with a few exceptions, the stories here, they feel more like the work of graduate workshops--not particularly satisfying in terms of language, or wit, or story, but more like a working out of some idea that you can see and appreciate. As exercises, in other words. Fine exercises, but pretty much never coming to life in a way that affected this reader deeply.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a truly fascinating book of short stories, but if you decide to read it you probably shouldn't read "Under the Bed" just before going to sleep. And if you do read "Under the Bed" just before going to sleep, don't continue on to "Justine Laughs at Death" to try and make it better. And if you do go onto "Justine Laughs at Death", at least read it all the way through. Don't give up and try to go to sleep in the middle, no matter how early you have to be up the next morning. Trust me.

[Karrie Aslanyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome. I want to read others' reviews

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The 13 short stories in this collection are witty, well-constructed, contain beautifully written passages, and Willett shows a lot of insight into human nature; nonetheless, I disliked this book a lot.

Originally published in 1987, it was reissued in 2002 with a new introduction by David Sedaris, who is quoted on the cover as saying, "[i]t's just the funniest collection of stories I've ever read," which, if true, could mean that all the other collections he's read are autopsy reports. It's neither here nor there, as I don't think these stories -- which are about teens killing their parents, adultery, rape, false accusations of child molestation, cancer, and a guy who feels like he would have made an excellent Nazi -- were intended to be funny, but it still seems like an odd thing to say. In fact Sedaris's entire introduction is odd; the gist of it is that in the 1980s he would read literally anything, including manuscripts that he found left behind in a photocopier, and that of all his indiscriminate reading, this was one of the things he liked. While I think his recommendation is sincere, it reads as if it's not.

In any event, I do not recommend this book, at least not taken as a whole. Each story, individually, is very good (and I have to say that's unusual in a short story collection, which is ordinarily two or three great stories plus another 200 pages of whatever the author scraped off his or her hard drive), but when you read the entire book in one or two sittings, it's all sort of disturbing. Aside from the dark subject matter of each story, there are in general two running themes: mildly disturbed and unlikeable children who clearly will never outgrow whatever it is that's wrong with them, and dysfunctional father/daughter relationships. The latter is present in nearly all the stories, either in an actual father/daughter relationship, which is either vaguely sexual or strangely maternal but never filial, or in the marriage of a woman to a man old enough to be her father (and in the one story where the protagonist is married to a man her own age, his hair has turned prematurely and completely gray.) Mothers in these stories are more an afterthought, present but not particularly necessary. After three or four similarly themed stories, I felt like I was reading writing exercises or character sketches or, at worst, do-it-yourself psychotherapy. In any case, it was starting to give me the shivers, and I was glad to get to the end of the book.

I've read two of Willett's novels this year, The Writing Class and Amy Falls Down, both of which I liked, but they were very different in style and tone both from this and from each other, which itself is strange since Amy Falls Down is the sequel to The Writing Class and yet they read as if they're written by two different people. So the upshot, I guess, is that with Willett you never know what you're going to get. She's a good writer, so you're bound to like something she's written, but unless you enjoy feeling depressed and sort of creeped out, it probably won't be this.

[Meghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book and I had a date at the Korean Women's Spa this week. The stories I enjoyed most were the first two and then the later story told in the format of an advice column. The themes start to repeat themselves and I didn't enjoy the last two stories in the collection. Very similar in tone to the David Sedaris collection Barrel Fever.

[Susann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dozen years after my first reading, I still think this is an excellent collection of short stories. My 2004 review probably would have been more glowing than this one. But if I seem tepid now, I think it's due to the timing of this re-read and how the mood of the stories wasn't quite what I was looking for.

According to my paper book journal, my favorite story in 2004 was "Justine Laughs At Death." This time it was "The Haunting of the Linguards."

Last read: 03-12-2004

[Sara Budarz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love short stories and was excited to stumble upon a collection from the 1980s that was back in print (and lauded by David Sedaris). Maybe I liked the idea of getting some insights into the decade I was born. But honestly, I'm not sure you'd be able to tell that they weren't written this year. And the stories themselves were just .... odd? Some I liked, some I counted the minutes until they were over. Overall, a really mixed bag.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly have no idea where this book came from, but one day I found it on my shelf and decided to read it. Most likely, it was required reading for a course that we never got around to reading. Either way, I'm glad I held on to it.

There's no great way to describe Willett's style. It's humorous and devastating. I highly recommend it.

[Emily Mellow · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are darkly humorous stories. One or two I didn't like, but there are enough great, unique stories to make the book a choice read. I generally prefer a novel to short stories, but these flowed nicely from one to the next...

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bleh.

Maybe a decade ago, I stumbled onto David Sedaris's official author website and found a list of recommended books. Jenny and the Jaws of Life was one of them. It had alongside it a blurb from David Sedaris talking about how great this short story collection was. When I tried to find the exact quote online, I discovered that Sedaris had written the introduction to a new edition of Jenny and the Jaws of Life, which included the line, "It's just the funniest collection of stories I've ever read." So I now feel slightly used. Note to self: check to see if someone has a financial stake in book recommendations before taking them at face value.

That being said, I 100% get why they got David Sedaris to write the introduction, because these stories seem like the would be totally up his alley. A mix of melancholy and comedy with each of the stories having aggressively unusual premises. My feelings on the book are much more mixed. Some I liked, like "The Best of Betty," which was a compilation of pithy advice columns that slowly revealed the cynicism of the author to the concerns of her readers. Others, like "Julie in the Funhouse," felt like they were trying a bit too hard; an attempt at a tragicomic take on the murder of a working mother by her three children, told from the perspective of her brother. It just didn't work for me.

One idea I kept returning to as I made my way through these stories was that of timelessness. This book was originally published in 1987, and I wonder if it would have resonated with me more if I'd read it in the temporal and cultural context in which it was written. Would "Julie in the Funhouse" have felt more fresh and less forced in a time where working mothers were rarer? I don't know, but I suspect it might have. Is timelessness the quality that separates the goods from the greats? "The Veldt" has some key plot points in common with "Julie in the Funhouse," but feels classic instead of dated. O'Connor, Poe, Lawrence... all of these authors come from specific place, time, and perspective but they still feel more relevant than these stories written a mere thirty years ago.

It makes me wonder how well modern short stories that I read today will age. Not that there's even anything wrong with literature aging poorly; I suppose it just means that sometimes you get lucky and read things exactly when they are meant to be read. Unfortunately, that just didn't happen for me and Jenny and the Jaws of Life.

[M.K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't decide on which of these stories is my favorite; they are all so well-rounded, pebbly, sacred and profane. If it seems I'm comparing Willett's stories to breasts, it would not be amiss. I found this book in a local shop that sells whatever the store owner likes. So among throws and glasses with pithy sayings, coffee beans and quiche was this book with its singular cover, and the David Sedaris endorsement. I haven't read a word of Sedaris, but I was in the mood for something 'really funny and perfectly sad at the same time'. I didn't indulge the mood, however, having only finished the collection now, six months later, permitting myself only one story a day. I do disciplinary things like that all the time. My specialty is to break a big thing into small pieces, and then dole it out a bit at a time. That's the way I read books, write novels, do housework, but not how I eat candy. Candy is my enemy and must be annihilated immediately.

Yes, I have gone off on a tangent. That's Post-Willett Syndrome: a tendency to consider your ordinary life as still capable of meaning.

To explain what Willett does with each story, I will quote directly from the protagonist from "The Jaws of Life" (which will also explain the cover): "I feel like a sardine, with the lid rolling back, and up above, in this blinding light, this huge devouring face." Every character must confront what they've become, what they've lost and what they must now live with.

And she accomplishes that each and every time within a story that is actually short, and not drawn out into truncated novellas. It means you can read one while having your morning coffee, the furnace blowing warm air through the vents, and then once done and bookmarked, you can get on with the business of your day, sometimes wondering if your life is remarkable enough, or ordinary enough, to star in a Willett short story. If you really are a sardine.

[Ensiform · Rating 3 out of 5]

These thirteen stories were originally published in 1987 and have been reissued with a panegyric introduction by David Sedaris. "The funniest collection of stories I've ever read," gushes the master of the laugh-out-loud story on the cover. This may have too strongly informed my expectations of this book. The stories here are more deadpan observations on life; I'd call their humor mordant, not laugh-out-loud. If I were in charge, I'd take Sedaris' rather deceptive blurb off its place of prominence on the cover. Anyhoo, this just to say that I might have appreciated Willett's writing, which is keen and witty, coming into it blind.

One of my favorite (and one of the funniest, perhaps?) stories here is "The Best of Betty," a collection of question and answers from an awful advice columnist who disposes eyebrow-raisingly unsympathetic responses in a folksy tone ("whining doesn't advance the ball"), which degenerates into a surreal, antagonistic back-and-forth between Betty and her detractors, and possibly ruminations on what it's like to be a woman of a certain age in our society (or is it merely parodying such ruminations?). "Sentimentality is wicked, but cynicism is worse." But this story is an outlier. In "Mr. Lazenbee," a sixth grader reports several innocent people, including her own father, to child protective services, apparently because she's a sociopath and wants attention. In "Under the Bed," a woman clinically ruminates on her own lack of trauma response to a rape. "Father of Invention" is a woman's series of seemingly unrelated flights of fantasy, from childhood play to consoling a dying man. "Justine Laughs at Death" is quite clever — a woman taunts a serial clever over the phone by showing how little he matters — but I don't think it could be called "funny." Willett is a writer who turns pathos into black humor with a psychologist's scalpel, and many of her points hit home, but mostly these stories aren't really for me.

[Anna Marcet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wonder why David Sedaris says that this is "the funniest collection of stories I've ever read". Most of them are tragic stories about mentally troubled or traumatized people, and their way of coping with life. Not funny, and not even trying to be.
Apart from that, most of the stories ended with me thinking "yes, but". Yes it's well written; yes, the characters are well built; yes, the idea, the point of view are surprising. No, I don't feel like the story has captured me.
I found myself worrying about Sedaris meaning of "funny" and Willett's state of mind more often than actually empathising with any of the characters.
So, this book does not work for me. Maybe it's not my kind of book.

[LH · Rating 4 out of 5]

NEARLY TWO YEARS LATER, I have at last finished this wonderful collection of short stories. The length of time it took me to finish is a reflection on me, not at all on the quality of the book. As with any book of short stories (presumably; I admit I have not read a great many short story collections), there were some I loved more than others, but there are definitely several that will stick with me (and/or have stuck with me, as some of them, once again, were read nearly two years ago).

Favorites: Best of Betty, Justine Laughs At Death, Résumé, and Jenny

[Lindsay Zombek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should probably write a review after I process this a little further. I anticipated more humor...there was humor, but often dark (very dark) humor. Some stories crossed into downright disturbing and should be avoided by anyone with sexual trauma triggers. The stories were compelling and moments of brilliance and wit were found in the quirks of various characters and in their experiences with the mundane and how the mundane escalates into the absurd.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the first books I added to my Goodreads to-read list. I added it, I think, because David Sedaris wrote such a glowing review of it. In fact, on the cover of the book it says,
"It's just the funniest collection of stories I've ever read - really funny and perfectly sad at the same time."
- David Sedaris

And while I can recognize in this book the pathos that runs through much of what Sedaris has written, none of this has the humor of one of his books. It's mostly just... strange.

[Michael Norwitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jincy Willet's stories display her sideways way of looking at life, her wisdom, and her quirky humor in an irreverent collection which is worth returning to often. Two of my favorites are 'Father of Invention,' which tracks a woman's fantasies over her lifetime, and 'Justine Laughs at Death,' almost a fantasy tale which evokes the legend of Jack the Ripper (some of the stories have disturbing themes or imagery, including this one).

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories are funny, but they're also sad - even hauntingly sad. Jincy Willet has the ability to bring forth such great characters. They are flawed, they are not always heroic and always doing the right thing - in fact, they are shallow, unaware, cowardly, reluctant to get involved. In other words, very human.

[Chandni · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably one of the most mediocre short story collections I've ever read. There are so many stories in this collection and none of them is over 3 stars. All of the characters are flat and most of the stories are pointless. They're not fun or engaging, and I really regret making my way through this.

I also didn't think the writing was especially good, it felt really flat to me.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Melinda Falling” is something special. Five stars.
“The Jaws of Life” is my second favorite story in the collection.
I also liked Anticipatory Grief” and “Under the Bed”
The other stories didn’t do anything for me

[Jami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost finished with this marvelous book of short stories... Jincy is one of the finest writers I've encountered. These stories are funny and heartbreaking. I haven't laughed this much since David Sedaris's "Naked"