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Thursday, August 29, 2019

The Collected StoriesThe Collected Stories by Amy Hempel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a collection of Hempel's first four books. She's still writing and publishing.

Hempel is a master of the minimalist style that Ray Carver (and his editor) popularized in the 1980s, but her stories don't have that raw masculine edge that Carver's do. If you're looking for plot, that's not what pulls you through a Hempel story. She's a master of the light touch, sentences and paragraphs that seem simple but carry more weight upon reflection. As I read through the stories, I felt constantly reminded that I was reading a New Yorker story. The narrator doesn't grab you by the collar and insist on telling her story so much as speaking quietly to the side with perhaps a stealthy glance to see if you are paying attention. Perhaps she'll float away if you are not.

There are more than 50 stories in this collection, of various length, ranging from one page to seventy.



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