Amy Hempel

Hempel's now-classic collection of short fiction is peopled by complex characters who have discovered that their safety nets are not dependable and who must now learn to balance on the threads of wit, irony, and spirit.

Stories by

Reasons to Live

Chiyeung lau

They say if you want to learn how to write, you should read Amy Hempel. Whoever said this wasn’t wrong; I was blown away by this collection and I will be reading this again and again.

There are so many gems:

“She laughs, and I cling to the sound the way someone dangling above a ravine holds fast to the thrown rope.”

“Here’s a trick I found for how to finally get some sleep. I sleep in my husband’s bed. That way the empty bed I look at is my own.”

While some compare her to Carver, I enjoyed reading her stories much more. She tackles loss, love and death with much more wit and humanity, yet intertwined with that is a sense of yearning and heart ache that you feel with every sentence. In that way she reminds me of Denis Johnson more so than Carver; there is a empathy I feel for all of her characters, something that I never felt for Carver’s.

Hempel’s stories are short but they’re thousand piece puzzles that require attentive reading; stories like Celia is back took me a few rereads to fully understand. She never outright explains anything, and you really have to read in between the lines.

My favorite stories from the collection:

San Francisco
In the cemetery where Al Jolson is buried
Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep
The man in Bogota

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