"When I fall in love with a book, I'm overwhelmed by the need to read it aloud to people. The better the writing, the wider the circle I want to read it to, and Amy Hempel's stories are so good that if someone loaned me a stadium, I'd take them to the masses.
Then again, I'm not sure these weird, elegant, breathtaking stories are really meant for the megaphone. They're the stuff of conversation, built of things you accidentally overhear and then can't get out of your head. Reading them I felt like an eavesdropper, maybe the luckiest eavesdropper in the world.
Just try reading 'Why I'm Here,' 'Nashville Gone to Ashes' or the one-sentence 'Memoir,' and tell me you don't feel the need to tap someone on the shoulder and say 'Hey, listen to this...'"
Publisher Scribner
Publication Date 2007-09-18
Section Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Archived Staff Suggestions / Margaret B.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780743291637
Amy Hempel is a master of the short story. This celebrated volume gathers together her complete work -- four short collections of stunning stories about marriages, minor disasters, and moments of revelation.
With her inimitable compassion and wit, Hempel introduces characters who make choices that seem inevitable, and whose longings and misgivings evoke eternal human experience.
For readers who have known Hempel's work for decades and for those who are just discovering her, this indispensable volume contains all the stories in Reasons to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, and The Dog of the Marriage. No reader of great writing should be without it.
