Today I finished The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. I really liked Hempel’s style of writing, and my only complaint about this work is that it was short stories- not a novel. I feel as though Hempel could have written a really awesome protagonist for a novel. Some of the stories were REALLY short, like a page long and I usually wanted more from the quick snapshot. The stories were all kind of sad, and I can see people reading these stories and getting sadder if they are already sad. The longest story, about a woman writing a letter to a man she’s met once while recuperating in a psychiatric home, had the most reflective and sexual elements, even though those opposing things seem unlikely to coincide. This story was my favorite. There were a lot of recurring themes in the book; car accidents, dogs, divorce. She lives in NYC and I feel like I’ve seen her or something… The stories are all familiar and have been published in all sorts of magazines so that might explain why.
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