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Searching... Newberg Public Library | FICTION HEMPEL | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel gathers together the complete work of a writer whose voice is as singular and astonishing as any in American fiction. Hempel, fiercely admired by writers and reviewers, has a sterling reputation that is based on four very short collections of stories, roughly fifteen thousand stunning sentences, written over a period of nearly three decades. These are stories about people who make choices that seem inevitable, whose longings and misgivings evoke eternal human experience. With compassion, wit, and the acutest eye, Hempel observes the marriages, minor disasters, and moments of revelation in an uneasy America.WhenReasons to Live,Hempel's first collection, was published in 1985, readers encountered a pitch-perfect voice in fiction and an unsettling assessment of the culture. That collection includes "San Francisco," which Alan Cheuse inThe Chicago Tribunecalled "arguably the finest short story composed by any living writer." InAt the Gates of the Animal Kingdom,her second collection, frequently compared to the work of Raymond Carver, Hempel refined and developed her unique grace and style and her unerring instinct for the moment that defines a character. Also included here, in their entirety, are the collectionsTumble HomeandThe Dog of the Marriage.As Rick Moody says of the title novella in Tumble Home, "the leap in mastery, in seriousness, and sheer literary purpose was inspiring to behold.... And yet," he continues,"The Dog of the Marriage,the fourth collection, is even better than the other three...a triumph, in fact."The Collected Stories of Amy Hempelis the perfect opportunity for readers of contemporary American fiction to catch up to one of its masters. Moody's passionate and illuminating introduction celebrates both the appeal and the importance of Hempel's work.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hempel's four collections of short fiction are all masterful; while readers await the follow-up to last year's acclaimed The Dog of the Marriage, this compendium restores the full set to print. The first of Hempel's books, Reasons to Live (1985), is justly celebrated by Rick Moody in his preface as a landmark of its era's "short-story renaissance"; it introduces Hempel's unmistakable tone, where a "besieged consciousness," Moody says, hones sentences to bladelike sharpness "to enact and defend survival." The second, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (1990), is the main reason to buy this book: used copies are scarce, and the collection contains stories like "The Harvest." Hempel's genius, whether in first or third person, is to make her characters' feelings completely integral to the scenes they inhabit; her terse descriptions become elegantly telegraphic-and telepathic-reportage, with not a word wasted and not a single fact embellished. Her great subject is the failure of human coupling, and she charts it at every stage: giddy beginnings, sexy thick-of-its, wan (or violent) outcomes, grim aftermaths. Seeing it laid out kaleidoscopically in this volume is an awesome thing indeed, and a pleasure lovers of the short story will not want to deny themselves. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
With the publication of her first book of short stories, Reasons to Live (1985), Hempel earned a strong position in the vanguard of the minimalist school of fiction writing, in vogue at that time and especially significant in the short story genre. Her three succeeding collections of stories, the most recent being The Dog of the Marriage (2005), maintained her high stature as a short story writer. She generally continued to compose tightly hewn stories despite the fact that minimalism as a stylistic movement was shrinking around her like a drying riverbed. The stories from her previous collections are gathered here into a single volume, and her achievement in the form is now boldly obvious. She has never imitated, never been just a somewhat anonymous member of a pack of talented storywriters. She is an original, having found--and kept--her unique way of expressing her not so much cut-and-dried as deeply penetrating vision. As the 70-page story Tumble Home testifies, Hempel can write longer than usual for her, and certainly that interior monologue by a patient in a mental institution is arresting in its pristine tracing of a pattern of thought. Nevertheless, she is at her best by far in the short, highly imagistic, sparely plotted, stiletto-keen slice of narrative that in her hands glistens in its sheerness, and for that she has made short story history. --Brad Hooper Copyright 2006 Booklist
Table of Contents
On Amy Hempel | p. xi |
Reasons to Live | |
In a Tub | p. 3 |
Tonight Is a Favor to Holly | p. 5 |
Celia Is Back | p. 13 |
Nashville Gone to Ashes | p. 17 |
San Francisco | p. 27 |
In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried | p. 29 |
Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep | p. 41 |
Going | p. 53 |
Pool Night | p. 57 |
Three Popes Walk into a Bar | p. 63 |
The Man in Bogota | p. 73 |
When It's Human Instead of When It's Dog | p. 75 |
Why I'm Here | p. 81 |
Breathing Jesus | p. 85 |
Today Will Be a Quiet Day | p. 89 |
At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom | |
Daylight Come | p. 101 |
The Harvest | p. 103 |
The Most Girl Part of You | p. 111 |
Rapture of the Deep | p. 123 |
Du Jour | p. 129 |
Murder | p. 133 |
The Day I Had Everything | p. 139 |
To Those of You Who Missed Your Connecting Flights Out of O'Hare | p. 149 |
And Lead Us Not into Penn Station | p. 153 |
In the Animal Shelter | p. 157 |
At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom | p. 159 |
The Lady Will Have the Slug Louie | p. 169 |
Under No Moon | p. 171 |
The Center | p. 177 |
Tom-Rock Through the Eels | p. 181 |
The Rest of God | p. 191 |
Tumble Home | |
Weekend | p. 199 |
Church Cancels Cow | p. 201 |
The Children's Party | p. 203 |
Sportsman | p. 209 |
Housewife | p. 221 |
The Annex | p. 223 |
The New Lodger | p. 229 |
Tumble Home | p. 233 |
Notes | p. 302 |
The Dog of the Marriage | |
Beach Town | p. 305 |
Jesus Is Waiting | p. 309 |
The Uninvited | p. 317 |
Reference #388475848-5 | p. 337 |
What Were the White Things? | p. 343 |
The Dog of the Marriage | p. 347 |
The Afterlife | p. 367 |
Memoir | p. 373 |
Offertory | p. 375 |
Notes | p. 404 |