Amy Hempel

«Su prosa te cautiva? Maravillosa.» Alice Munro «Cada relato es tan conciso, tan ceñido a la esencia de los hechos, que lo único que puedes hacer es tumbarte en el suelo, boca abajo, y deshacerte en

One of TheNew York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of the YearAmy Hempels dazzling wit and exquisite use of language are impossible to disclaim (San Francisco Chronicle) and this celebrated volume gathers together her complete workfour short collections of stunning stories about marriages, minor disasters, and moments of revelation.Amy Hempel is a master of the short story. 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 Hempels 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.

Critically acclaimed master of the short story Amy Hempels Tumble Home is narrated by people with skewed visions of home. Not exactly crazy, they become obsessed and irrational as their inner logic leads them astray. In the title novella, a woman living in a psychiatric halfway house writes to a man she has met only once. Proceeding in brief vignettes that link and illuminate, she recounts her peculiar life with the other patients. The accretions of anecdote lead deeper and deeper into the psyche and history of the narrator, gradually revealing the reason for her urgent letter.

Amy Hempels compassion, intensity, and illuminating observations have made her one of the most distinctive and admired modern writers. In three stunning books of stories, she has established a voice as unique and recognizable as the photographs of Cindy Sherman or the brushstrokes of Robert Motherwell. The Dog of the Marriage, Hempels fourth collection, is about sexual obsession, relationships gone awry, and the unsatisfied longings of everyday life.In "Offertory," a modern-day Scheherazade entertains and manipulates her lover with stories of her sexual encounters with a married couple as a very young woman. In "Reference # 388475848-5," a letter contesting a parking ticket becomes a beautiful and unnerving statement of faith. In "Jesus Is Waiting," a woman driving to New York sends a series of cryptically honest postcards to an old lover. And the title story is a heartbreaking tale about the objects and animals and unmired desires that are left behind after death or divorce.These nine stories teem with wisdom, emotion, and surprising wit. Hempel explores the intricate psychology of people falling in and out of love, trying to locate something or someone elusive or lost. Her sentences are as lean, original, and startling as any in contemporary fiction.

LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARDONE OF TIMES 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARONE OF NPRS BEST BOOKS OF 2019From legendary writer Amy Hempel, one of the most celebrated and original voices in American short fiction: an astounding collection of fifteen stories that are riveting in precision (The Atlantic) and scintillating as the blade of a knife (The Wall Street Journal). Amy Hempel is a master of the short story. A multiple award winner, Hempel is beloved and highly regarded among writers, reviewers, and readers of contemporary fiction.These fifteen exquisitely honed stories reveal Hempel at her most compassionate and spirited, as she introduces characters, lonely and adrift, searching for connection. In A Full-Service Shelter, a volunteer at a dog shelter tirelessly, devotedly cares for dogs on a list to be euthanized. In Greed, a spurned wife examines her husbands affair with a glamorous, older married woman. And in Cloudland, the longest story in the collection, a woman reckons with the choice she made as a teenager to give up her newborn infant. Quietly dazzling, these stories are replete with moments of revelation and transcendence and with Hempels singular, startling, inimitable sentences.Ravishing, heartbreaking, and powerfully concise, Sing to It is an exquisite collection (The Wall Street Journal) and a quiet masterpiece by a true American original (NPR).

Una de las autoras de relatos más importantes de la actualidad.«Su prosa te cautiva… Maravilloso», Alice Munro; «Cada relato es tan conciso, tan ceñido a la esencia de los hechos, que lo único que pu

La edición definitiva de los cuentos de Amy Hempel, una de las maestras norteamericanas del género, que incluye su último volumen de cuentos, inédito hasta ahora en castellano. «Su prosa te cautiva…

Una de las autoras de relatos más importantes de la actualidad.«Su prosa te cautiva… Maravilloso», Alice Munro; «Cada relato es tan conciso, tan ceñido a la esencia de los hechos, que lo único que pu

Una de las autoras de relatos más importantes de la actualidad.«Su prosa te cautiva…Maravilloso», Alice Munro; «Cada relato es tan conciso, tan ceñido a la esencia de los hechos, que lo único que pue