I think I mentioned Chuck Palahnuik and I have become extremely close? As in, I read his Consider This twice and took notes? You remember, on New Year’s Eve, 2020?
Anyhow, Chuck mentions this Amy Hempel character more than a few times, in glowing terms.
So, if l ❤️ Chuck and Chuck ❤️ Amy, then I need to see what this Amy person has going for her. Turns out quite a lot.
So now I ❤️ Amy.
I’m not going to give you an in depth review of my own when this one in The New Yorker does it perfectly Keeping Up With Amy Hempel.
The Collected Stories (the book I’m reading) doesn’t have the fifth collection mentioned in the article, goddammit (Sing to It, 2019) but what it says rings true about all her work – her stories are a masterclass in how to write stories if you want all show, no tell.
Here’s another review from The Atlantic that sums her writing up better than I have the energy for right now (although clearly I could, if I wanted to. Just so we are clear).
Hempel treats you as an equal – you are required to pay attention, but she provides plenty of humour and off-kilter characters to keep you engaged. As George Saunders puts it in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, she provides the reader with lots of ‘fuelling stations’ throughout the story, where we can keep our pep up and our interest engaged as we read.
Obviously, he says it better than that, which is why I ❤️ George Saunders too.
As I am extremely generous, and so you don’t have to buy a book just on my say-so, here are a few of her online stories to try:
In the Cemetery where Al Jolson is Buried.
Just waving 