At The Gates Of The Animal Kingdom: Stories [Hardcover]

Amy Hempel (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Here the very talented Hempel works in a hard-bitten, often mannered mode with material made familiar in her first book, Reasons to Live . The stories in her new collection follow people through crises and emergencies, from traffic accidents to mastectomies, as they take risks, waiting "for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life" yet frequently "cut off from meaning and completion" in the end. A housewife in "Under No Moon" is mysteriously bent on seeing a comet, but in a minor comedy of errors fails to do so. The earnest and foolish young mother in "The Center" attempts to sponsor a destitute child, all the while behaving with the self-serving zeal of a super-yuppie consumer. In "The Harvest," one of the strongest stories, a narrator reconstructs, then deconstructs, the events leading up to and following a motorcycle injury that leaves a lasting psychological wound. Mordant and unsentimental, Hempel works with a sharp wit that sometimes shaves away too ruthlessly at characters, limiting the depth of her sympathy--and ours.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A book of short stories always brings with it the possibility of intriguing titles, and there are several grabbers in this collec tion. In "The Most Girl Part of You," one watches Big Guy, a kind of charming lug who has an obsession with ice water, as he plays the mating game with the narra tor. "And Lead Us Not into Penn Sta tion" is a testament to the insensitivity, lack of compassion, and passive accep tance of others' suffering that seems to permeate much of modern urban life. "The Rest of God" leaves the reader caught in the undertow of emotion at a beach picnic as a husband and wife are swept together briefly by a cosmic surge. Other titles include "The Day I Had Ev erything," "Tom-Rock Through the Eels," and "In the Animal Shelter." Hem pel handles her themes of disorientation, dissolution, and deliverance well. She writes in a conversational style that dis plays both wit and a wry intelligence. This collection would fit nicely with other works of contemporary fiction.
-Francis Poole, Kentucky Wesleyan Coll., Owensboro
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 137 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (March 10, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394571746
• ISBN-13: 978-0394571744
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,283,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ROUNDABOUT, June 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom: Stories (Paperback)

One night I convinced myself that I had once attempted to crack my teeth by drinking coffee immediately after ice water. Later I realized that Jack "Big Guy" Fitch from Amy Hempel's "The Most Girl Part of You," had been the tooth-cracker, not me. When first reading At The Gates of the Animal Kingdom the stories swam swiftly by like the fish in the Roundabout at the Aquarium in the story of the same name; they were a quick read. Immediately afterward I thought little about them. After distancing myself from them with hours and days they eerily began to creep back into my life--sentence by sentence, one by one. I started to read them again. What makes Hempel's stories so unearthing is their lack of gravity. I don't mean this in a flippant sense. Some of the stories are quite unsettling, but they float into your consciousness rather than tearing into it with a hoe and shovel. Initially I attributed their affect to the events and subjects of the stories; almost all of them deal with subjects common to contemporary young women; however, Hempel's prose seduced me for a different reason. These stories lack perfection, but not in a derogatory sense. Hempel's stories do not take on the air of being this brick wall of material. The stories wander and spin; they were personal. For example in "The Center" Hempel spends the first page and a half writing about "my friend Deborah" who "for the price of a cup of coffee a day" had "adopted a child." Then unexpectedly she begins to talk about a dog named Pal: "I was thinking about Pal." The fact that there is no mentioning of Pal, dogs, or pets in this first half of the story breaks the writing convention that says key elements of the story should be introduced early on, preferably in the first paragraph. Clearly Pal has something to do with the story. Whether or not the story of how Pal has been reincarnated into Original Pal and Pal Junior similarly to how Deborah's adopted child changed or whether the section on Pal supposedly shows the narrators lack of interest in Deborah's ranting, I'm not sure. And Hempel made me not care. I took her words as a nice vacation package, where someone else did all the worrying. Another positive element of Hempel's work is her sense of freedom. There are quirky details that seemingly have no purpose but to colour the story with authenticity and make the story a genuine experience. In "Rapture of the Deep" a trick-or-treater "dressed up in pyjamas and carried a bottle of Diet Pepsi," and " was supposed to be Brian Wilson, but everybody guessed Hugh Hefner." By Halloween I believe I shall be convinced that this trick-or-treater came to my house. I didn't read this book; I felt like I lived it. Hempel's lack of didactics and gentle way of eliciting emotion worked well. Unlike some contemporary writers, who sets up definitive events that typically produced emotional reactions,the death of a dog, a relationship break-up, etc.Hempel does not bait her reader. Her stories remain ambiguous and do not rely solely on serious elements to evoke an emotional reaction. In fact, it seemed to me that she left her stories for the reader to pick up what they wanted, but the stories still retained the ability to delve into my consciousness, but it was an ethereal, dream-like process. Perhaps it is in my dreams where I have cracked my teeth with ice water and coffee? Maybe even with Jack "Big Guy" Fitch? Or on Halloween at the Aquarium? Who can tell what happens in that imaginative space, but it is where the story and the reader unite and where I received Hempel's stories uninterrupted.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars she's beyond words really., March 8, 2004

By 

Paulina n Beyond - See all my reviews

This review is from: At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

Never reading Hempel is like dying a virgin. The expectations cast by the stories in "Reasons to Live" would be impossible for most writers to overcome, but somehow she does it, without missing a beat. If i could give more stars i would. My favourite stories from this book being, "The Harvest" "At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom" "Murder" and "Rapture of the Deep". The effort she must've put forth in writing in such a minimalist style illustrates how much Hempel cares about each sentence. The stories are elegant and to the point, not a second is wasted, not a word is misplaced. If you're ever lucky enough to find this book, consider yourself blessed (for whatever reason its out of print). She is the needle in a haystack. Her stories pierce straight to the heart, and will stick with you for the rest of your life.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Minimalism at its best, March 27, 2004

By 

Lenell E. Kelley "aliasverite" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

This book is one of my favorite collections of short stories. They say that Raymond Carver is the master of minimalism in the short story genre but Hempel's work is definitely on par. Each story is a look at life from a different angle. She takes the moments and events that we simply experience without a second thought or glance and turns them so that they reveal something extraordinary. She is not verbose - so if you feel you can't enjoy a story without heavy description and don't have the desire/patience to think about the weight of small events or it overwhelms you to realize that even the subtleties of life have a momentum of their own - you won't appreciate this. There is also a lot that is inferred but not said. She chooses her words very carefully - just as a poet one line can resonate. In the Animal Shelter is only 4 short paragraphs but one of the most powerful in this collection. I discovered her writing as an undergraduate in the early 90's and I still reach for her books and find something new to enjoy.