Customer Reviews

Reasons to Live

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I first found Amy Hempel in college. A perceptive, smart instructor assigned me "The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried." It was a shock to the system. For the first time in years words on a page made me weep. I was instantly hooked on Amy Hempel.

This is, I believe, her greatest collection. From first page to last it is an extraordinary look into the human condition. The two real standouts are the aforemention "Al Jolson" and a story called "Nashville Gone to Ashes."

Nashville is about the recent widdow of a veterinarian. Saying it that way seems to short it a bit. Like all of Ms Hempel's stories, Nashville is about human suffering, courage, love, despair and being human.

Read these stories and you will weep.

I knew this would be a great collection when I spotted this at the bookstore. Reasons to Live contains a collection of fifteen wonderful, witty and sometimes poignant short stories that make you think of the loss of opportunities one has in life. Amy Hempel, who also wrote the beautiful Tumble Home, writes with aplomb and insight of a classic writer. My favorite stories are "Nashville Gone to Ashes," "Going," "Pool Night," and "Why I'm Here." Once again, Amy Hempel has floored me with another impressive, beautiful collection. I will definitely give her other books a whirl.

1. Amy Hempel is one of the best kept secrets of modern fiction. 2. The stories say so much without saying too much. 3. The characters earn your compassion. 4. "In the cemetary where Al Jolson" is buried is the greatest short story I have ever read. 5. If you have ever grieved or felt loss, you will relate to these stories.

The short stories in "Reasons to Live" are unlike anything else I have read in fiction. The amount of emotion poured into each story and into each character is astounding for the lack of detail that each tale contains. Nowhere within "Reasons to Live" was I let down or was I not effected by the sheer beauty of Hempel's prose or her ability to bring her characters to life. Amy Hempel truly has the ability to change the way we look at our daily lives, causing us to find meaning even in the smallest details that we would otherwise overlook.

Thank goodness for Amy Hempel, egging on those of us who write short stories by constantly keeping her breathtaking prose to under fifty pages.
I had a writing teacher who warned us against trying to write after reading Amy, because we would feel compelled to try to emulate her. Of course this is almost always true with influence, but Amy Hempel's writing is like a drug. Reading her words makes the idea of writing newly exciting. It's a challenge to keep up with her, to capture the world in such perfectly crafted, concise sentences, to exercise such restraint and hint at such powerful emotions underneath.
I could have written this for any of Amy's work, especially her recently published collected works, but I chose "Reasons to Live" because of "The Man in Bogota" and "Celia is Back," my two personal favorites.
If you're a writer, read on with caution; if not, I promise Amy will make you want to start.

There are many reasons to read Amy Hempel's superb debut, "Reasons to Live". Here you have five of them:

1- Less Is More: She writes like nobody with fewer words than anyone. I used to think that Raymond Carver was minimalist (although he didn't like this label). Silly me. Hempel is able to use fewer words than him. Her style is very economic displaying only the very necessary.

2 - "In The Cemetery Where Al Jonson Is Buried": One of the best short stories written by any writer anywhere. Reportedly her first text, Hempel has debuted with assurance and grace. A whole live passes in front of our eyes in less than 20 pages.

3 - People: Hempel writes about human beings, and not big Historical Facts. Thank God. Many people may look down on writers like her - also Carver, Alice Munro etc - because the readers have the stupid feeling of not being learning anything. In the end of one of her stories (any of them) we can have the feeling of knowing the world a little better. And this is priceless.

4 - Images: Imagine a plastic Jesus figure that can breath. Now imagine the amazement of a character looking at it and asking for a miracle. Now imagine you, as a reader, being swallowed by this situation. Got the picture?

5 - Reasons to Live: This collection is populated by people trying to find a better reason to stay alive. There are many, they just have to find them. Hempel's way of approaching this people is delicate and complex. We couldn't ask for more.

I bought this book because it was recommended by Chuck Palahniuk on his website. Reading it you can definitely see that it influenced him in his writings. The stories are short, but each one is great in there own way. Check it out.

The book was received in very good condition and very quickly. I was prepared to wait a few weeks, it came within a few days. Thanks!

After reading this collection, I fell in love with Amy Hempel. I'm a writing student, and her book was on several reccommended reading lists, so about a year and a half ago, I picked it up. It hasn't left my side since. Hempel is amazing with subtleties and expressing pure human emotion at the same time. 'In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried,' my favorite story in the collection, was actually the first story Hempel ever wrote in a writing class. Her words are breathtaking, and I felt the same way after reading her collection as the first line in it: "My heart--I thought it stopped."

Amy Hempel is a literary goddess. These stories are not "traditional" fiction in the sense that there's not necessarily a beginning-middle-end, not necessarily linear character development. Instead, there is a complete understanding of time, and character *truth*. In the four-page story "Going," we become intimate immediately with the nameless young male narrator simply from his brief description of his recent car crash in the desert. You can understand characters from phrases such as "Then she'll carry herself to the bedroom like a completed jigsaw puzzle" more than you could ever from a lengthy description. Even with her extremely distinctive narrative style (I promise you, once you have read this book, you will be able to recognize her work from a single paragraph), she gives every character in the book a distinctive voice. Every word in Amy Hempel's work is well-chosen, every story so much bigger than it first appears. My favorites are the longer ones in this book ("Tonight Is a Favor to Holly," "In the Cemetary Where Al Jolson Is Buried," "Today Will Be a Quiet Day"--can we talk about the brilliance of her titles, as well?), but even the two- to four-pagers, like "Why I'm Here," are enough to keep you reeling for days. Read this book. Then read it again. The few hours it takes will be some of the best you've ever spent (and nothing compared to how long you spend contemplating it).