Customer Reviews

At The Gates Of The Animal Kingdom: Stories

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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.

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.

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.

Amy Hempel's collection of short stories in this book is marvelous. At first glance I was afraid that the animal theme would become old I soon realized that as with all of her writings I should not have given in to such assumptions. The stories in this collection are mostly quite short, some only a page, but they are not vingettes or prose poems-- each page is as full as any longer story. The stories range from disturbing and sad to winsome and heart warming, but as with Amy Hempel's other works she always touches both your mind and your heart.

It's almost too easy to start out this review with a metaphor based on a line from a story in this book. Never mind that it's a line from the best story in here ("The Harvest") and that it seems ample: "I leave a lot out when I tell the truth." This seems too easy a start, and it doesn't feel all that original. I'd only be repeating an idea some other reviewer must have come up with, an idea that probably seemed cute at the time, and since I find most review writing stale and tedious, I'd prefer to take a different route.

So let's go with a reaction that feels more individuated: I read this book four times before I could even hope to talk about it, half of those readings accomplished in one train ride from Philadelphia to New York City (not all that long an expanse, so you can imagine my intensity, for I am not that quick a reader). Aside from the aforementioned quotation that I had hoped not to aforemention, I doubt I could successfully pull out many more lines from this collection of stories and have them sing out of context the way they do in the deep fray of reading.

Hempel's work thrives inside its context. Sentences and words and ideas and syllables build upon each other--such as in a scene where slicing mosquito bites becomes exquisite foreplay--creating moments of synergy between reader and text that mere description or analysis can not hope to recapture. Perhaps my personal reactions to this work stem from my recognition that reading Hempel makes me mindful of my own aesthetics as an artist--makes me put my own demands as a reader to the fore. This is very active, very front-brain reading, tinged with exquisite, visceral pleasure-oddities, base humor, and deep sadness. This book is like eating fresh-water eel: soft and palatable, firing neurons that make you feel squishy and a little too wrapped up in the moment.

Give me a moment, and it is easy for me to jump up on any self-made lectern and spout about the need to set alight the all-too-high refuse pile of stale creativity in the world. "Elephant dung on the Virgin Mary! Huzzah!" If a "masterpiece" does not provoke an immediate gut reaction, if we can only look at it with intellectual distance, then make a place mat out of it and let it do something for us finally.

But Hempel's work draws me from my lectern, as I ride on a train, somewhere in the hinterlands of the Trenton, New Jersey area. I want to pull on people's sleeves and read lines aloud. The sheer relevance of Hempel's fiction had me sitting back and waiting for things to unfold. I was content to be patient, certain each story would fulfill my needs. Any work of art that so reaches the reader in the present deserves to remain available in the present. Discovering that this book was out of print only put me on another lectern--this one facing the printing press--so I could demand of it some conscience. Reading is a lonely enough pastime without being limited by the publisher's failure to keep a fine book in print. "Spread the gospel" my artistic imp demands!

Choice moments from the Book of Hempel? Consider:

--In "The Harvest," a story worth painting on the wall, the narrator's sad tale of surgery and litigation and the unwillingness to tell a story straight reaches a moment of pure breathlessness when the ending hinges on the tragic occupation of fishing for abalone.

--I often despise the modern predilection for creating "quirky" characters. It's exploitative and just plain cruel-as if most perpetrators of this act have any empathy for the freakish--and Hempel shows why in being the exception. In "The Most Girl Part of You," Jack "Big Guy" Fitch is trying to crack his teeth and rides his bike into the back of a trash truck out of a sadness so deep it seems alien, yet Hempel's treatment is more than accessible--it's absolutely empathic.

--A one-line tribute/damnation of the era of TV's Dynasty: "Wednesday nights we watched a show where women in expensive clothes appeared on lavish sets and promised to ruin one another."

--This title: "To Those of You Who Missed Your Connecting Flights out of O'Hare."

--Mrs. Carlin, the animal lover of the title story, with whom you can't help but be annoyed and for whom you are ready to cry.

Amy Hempel perhaps shows what is best about this style people want to call minimalism. She leaves much out, but only through such restraint is she able to tell the truth. Her characters perform in a theater of great pathos. Hempel has enough compassion for them to let them insult us, aggravate us or weep for us (or us them). And in every case, they have something very directly to do with us--and not in any sentimental way. We may want to deny a connection, but I think we'll consistently fail, and if we don't fail, we'll be cheating ourselves out of a damn good read.

Hempel's prose style snaps hard and fast to the point of the story, without filling us up on meat. It's like eating only the best parts of the meal and throwing green beans and potatoes onto the floor for the dogs. I read through three or four books of Hempels in about the same number of days. They were all just delicious. Of them, this one stuck out as the best.

I read this book becuase someone compared this book to books written by one of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahniuk. Well, I started reading, and, although I tried, I just could not enjoy it. I mean, absolutely nothing happens in these stories: characters don't develop, there is no action, nobody goes on a journey, absolutely nothing happens. These stories read as follows: a guy gets up, he goes to the store and buys milk, he walks home, he has a bowl of cereal. That's all that happens in most of these stories. Perhaps I'm missing something, and perhaps there's something I don't know that would make this book make sense, in which case, I apologize for this rant. But really, if you like reading books where stuff happens, then I'd skip this one.