Jody Hobbs Hesler’s debut story collection, What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better, explores the everyday hardships of American life with a tenderness and understanding that leaves open the possibility of hope. The characters that populate the 17 stories in this collection come from all walks of life: husbands and wives. Parents and children. A dogwalker, an ex-con, a hotel maid. What they share is a yearning for connection, each cocooned in their own breed of misery as they struggle to make sense of the relationships that define their lives.
For the male protagonists, the only way forward is to return to the past. In “Sorry Enough,” for example, an ex-con tries to make amends by offering to help the woman he injured in a hit and run, while in “The Secret Life of Otto and Hilda,” a father reexamines his impulse to buy a giant M&M and other extravagant gifts for his estranged daughter. In “Heart Blown Through,” a husband of 35 years reflects on an affair he had 30 years earlier, as his wife lays dying in the hospital. And in “Beautiful Day,” a dogwalker revisits painful memories when a client brings him back to his old neighborhood. Hesler treats her male characters with a combination of compassion and firmness, acknowledging the circumstances and motivations behind their mistakes without quite letting them off the hook.
For the women protagonists, the yearning for connection takes on more immediacy, as they wrestle with the indignity of being a woman in a man’s world. In “Things Are Already Better Someplace Else,” a woman seeks comfort from the mother of the man who has abducted her daughter. Likewise, in “Everything Was the Color Red,” a mother and daughter grapple with feelings of helplessness and betrayal in the aftermath of domestic abuse. And in “Regular English,” a bitter hotel maid makes assumptions about the new girl, only to learn that she, too, is a victim of misogyny. For other women, it is the longing for children that shapes their struggle. After suffering multiple miscarriages, the protagonist in “Next to the Fortune-Teller’s House,” becomes obsessed with her fortune-telling neighbor, while in “If Wishes Were Children,” a childless woman out grocery shopping fixates on a little girl seemingly neglected by her mother.
Some of the most powerful stories in the collection center on children—girls and boys on the cusp of adulthood, trying to figure out who they can and can’t trust. In “No Good,” an adolescent girl dreary of “the chronic sameness of the open-ended days” follows an older boy into the woods in pursuit of a thrill, while in “Girl at the Gas-a-Thon,” a teenaged boy risks his life in an attempt to win the attention of his crush. Poor judgement abounds, sometimes on the part of the kids, other times on the part of the parents. In “Grown-Up Party,” a young girl narrowly avoids abduction when she’s forced to accompany her father to an inappropriate party, while in “Sweetness,” a teenaged boy is swayed by the toxic masculinity of his friends and their fathers to treat a girl in a way that he knows is wrong. The author understands how precarious life can be for these kids, their wellbeing balancing on the edge of a thousand tiny decisions they may or may not be conscious of making.
Hesler’s writing style is crisp and clear, each word chosen with exquisite care. Of particular note is her skill for blending the interior world of her characters with concrete elements of time and place: “The bristle of his hair against hers sent a thrill through her. The last of the evening’s lightning bugs blinked on and off, flashing bright haloes of light into the thickening dark.” The result is a heightened emotional impact that is rich with atmosphere and sensory correlates. But it is Hesler’s ability to tease out the secret longings and disappointments of her characters that really makes these stories shine.
There’s a loneliness running through this collection, a recognition that no matter how many people we may have in our circle, we can never fully connect with another, never quite shake that sense of detachment that comes with being an individual. In “Alone,” the aptly named opening story, a young mother becomes engrossed in the life and death of her reclusive neighbor, contemplating her own life from the vantage point of an outsider:
Sometimes during a party, with Ella crawling wild and muddy across my lap and Lynn nearby threatening to nurse yet again, I would gaze up at Beane’s front window, which forever flickered in shifting TV light, and I’d fantasize about slipping into his house, invisible, to see what it felt like on the other side of so much human noise.
Later in the story, the protagonist does just that—absconding from her family for just long enough to feel the chill of aloneness.
Despite this detachment, or perhaps because of it, the stories that make up this collection end on a thoughtful note, leaving us to reflect on their meaning long after closing the book. Ultimately, What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better is a celebration of human connection, reminding us that who we are is reflected in the people around us, whether members of our family, people from our past, or strangers at a supermarket.
What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better, by Jody Hobbs Hesler. Stevens Point, Wisconsin: Cornerstone Press, October 2023. 236 pages. $24.95, hardcover.
Elizabeth Shick is the debut author of The Golden Land, winner of the 2021 AWP Prize for the Novel. A longtime American expatriate, she has lived and worked in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Italy. Liz currently resides in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and West Tisbury, Massachusetts. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Lesley University and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University.
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