Below is a growing accumulation of published reviews and comments on my writing. Of  course I’ve only included the kind ones!

On my work in progress (short fiction collection):

“Sophisticated literary fiction: haunts, tickles, and disturbs — and subverts. I laughed several times in places I later felt I shouldn’t, and I often shuddered. I at once admired the writer’s technique, and experienced emotional connections with the characters; those two things don’t always happen. [The writer’s] work is a delight: rich and strange.”

Michelle Butler Hallett, Adjudicator, WFNB David Adams Richards Prize 2018, 1st Place “The Purpose of Evolution is Not Immortality” (unpublished book-length manuscript)

On mouth human must die (chapbook, Frog Hollow Press 2017 and part of my collection in progress):

“Madness. Anti-conformist thinking. An animal muse. Sentences that go where you don’t always expect. In this short story Thompson pays attention not only to the sentences but to the words, spoken and thought, by Lester, the narrator, and Doctor Shabazz, his not-quite doctor, as well as Lara who – well, it would be spoiling things to say more there – and the result is writing that often surprises. Everything is indirect; reality blurs into dreams, and vice versa. The writing is self-assured without closing off various interpretations.” Jeff Bursey, via Goodreads

“This 2017 chapbook by New Brunswick author Lee D. Thompson is either the work of a literary genius or a literary madman (not that the two are mutually exclusive)… Mr Thompson gets inside a story like a jazz musician gets inside a familiar song, turning it upside down and inside out, leaving threads of it recognisable if you listen closely. A talented musician will inspire the listener in the way an author who has a way with words will inspire a reader causing him or her to ponder over the story long after the book is shelved. Lee D. Thompson’s mouth human must die is a concise, exceptional example of inspired creative writing.”  James Fisher, Miramichi Reader

“Mouth Human Must Die, a short story by Moncton-based Lee Thompson, is darker than The Noise of the Weeping of the People, and aggressively poetic. Narrated by a schizophrenic named Lester, the book relies on snippets of conversation from outside characters to make sense of the hallucinogenic nature of the action. Like Bauer, Thompson is more interested in the way Mouth Human Must Die is being told than the story itself, and his use of associative language, which generates the text’s strange unease, is virtuosic. Consider this meditation on golf:

Doctor Shabazz likes croquet, but hates golf. Golf is madness,
                   he says, while croquet is contemplation. Golf symbolizes man’s  outrageous ambition. It symbolizes his need to reach beyond his
                  grasp. Golf is a moon shot; golf is climbing the sheer face of a
                  glacier. Golf is conquest and mass murder. Golf is fanatics
                  rushing the temple with machetes.

Beginning plainly with the symbolic possibilities of sport, Thompson’s metaphors quickly take on a life of their own, propelling the paragraph forward into a world that’s increasingly physical and dangerous. Menace is front and centre in Mouth Human Must Die, and the worldview expressed above is in keeping with the central character’s paranoia. This emotion builds to a savage climax—no spoilers—where Thompson makes a big, although not entirely unexpected, reveal. The obvious conclusion doesn’t sink the story though. Thompson’s prose is worth reading regardless of the outcome of Mouth Human Must Die, especially for its sonic and poetic possibilities. ”  Jim Johnstone, essay in Parallel Universe: the poetries of New Brunswick

On S. a novel in [xxx] dreams (Broken Jaw Press, 2008)

“It reminds me of many fictional disconnections, including Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, and some of John Barth’s tidewater tales. Most of all, at the moment, it puts me in the same neighbourhood as Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. But it is all its own, beyond its resonances. Lee Thompson captures a dream/nightmare scape that is almost as bizarre as real life. Definitely recommended.” David Hallett, Goodreads

“Thompson succeeds in his goal of presenting a novel through dreams, completing the story as much by what he leaves out as by what he includes. It’s even more fun and more compelling on second reading. The writing is as good as any you’ll read and better than most. Just because he doesn’t tell you everything doesn’t mean he can’t choose the perfect word or image to provoke a response.” Gerard Collins, Goodreads

“This is in turns melancholy, surreal, funny, and inventive. Worth finding.”  Jeff Bursey, Goodreads