Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Amy Hempel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 1997

A collection of stories portrays a variety of characters whose vision is slightly skewed and whose inner logic keeps leading them to make bad decisions as they become obsessed and irrational about the places they call home. 15,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In keeping with its minimalist content, Amy Hempel's latest collection of seven stories and a novella weighs in at a slim 155 pages; what the book lacks in heft, however, it more than makes up for in mood. Hempel, the author of two other short-story collections, is a master of witty understatement. In "The Children's Party," the narrator gives some advice to a father whose children feel that getting a new dog after the old one was killed would be disloyal: "'Tell them this: The need for the new love is faithfulness to the old,'" to which the father replies, "'That's what I used to tell myself when I cheated on my ex-wife.'" In Hempel's stories, nothing much happens, yet everything changes.

The collection's title is taken from the novella, in which a woman committed to a psychiatric institution writes a letter to a famous painter she has only met once. The letter is written over the course of several days, and as the writer chronicles her life among the other patients, she reveals her wounded psyche and her struggle to find home, "the place where nothing can touch you." In one way or another, all of Hempel's characters are looking for home, but there is nothing epic in their voyages of discovery; rather, it is in the little things--the touch of an unshaven cheek, a school of bluefish leaping in the surf, a baby's grave--that Hempel captures a whole world of feeling.

From Booklist

This collection of stories explores characters who define themselves primarily through loss, especially loss revolving around "home." The narrator in "The New Lodger" returns to a familiar town but forgoes reunions and instead writes her friends postcards, to make her feel the "pull of the old home, pulling apart the new." In "The Annex," a new home owner establishes her sense of place in relation to a premature baby's gravesite, across the street, and to its still grieving mother. This and other stories, most only a few pages, are warm-ups for the novella, conceived as a letter by a young woman recovering in a rehabilitation facility, written to an artist she's seen once, briefly. The narrator struggles to define herself in relation to her mother, who has taken her own life, and the letter serves as narrative therapy, tracing the parallel challenges of self-understanding and narrative coherence--"No right place to begin" --and the relief of humor and wordplay--"Art has drawing power" --as well as the subtle perceptual shifts that can mark character transformation. Through these last Hemple deftly angles us into her character's world. Jim O'Laughlin

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (May 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684833751
• ISBN-13: 978-0684833750
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,032,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't let the shortness and simplicity fool you..., November 5, 2004

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories (Paperback)

...this is an amazing piece of work. I loved reading Tumble Home. This short-story collection is brief (only 160 pages long) and the stories are deceptively simple. But each story holds profound messages centered on family life and other every day events that may seem insignificant at first glance. My favorite stories are "Sportsman," "The New Lodger," "The Children's Party," and the novella "Tumble Home." Again, the stories are very short, but nevertheless beautiful. Amy Hempel's writing is sparse but possesses such beautiful prose that I just couldn't put this collection down. Hers is a voice that sounds poetic at times. I recommend this book to all short-story lovers.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sublime book., October 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories (Hardcover)

In a decade of flabby mass-dense but weightless prose, when PCs coax 800 page novels from 3 page brains and there is no fiction that has enough edge to cut soft butter, in a time when short stories are carelessly wrought retreads of rehashed earlier stories, inflicted on readers in the borrowed and depressing syntax of 1950's hackiest fictions, in these bleak days there is one writer, one yet, who still works to make us wince, or laugh out loud, or see the world made new. Look to her tropes, her figurings and how none of her stuff seems mannered, but it's all easy and natural and bright. Buy the book, friend.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good at times, but inconsistent., April 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories (Paperback)

Some of the stories in this book are really good, but others just aren't. Having read and been totally blown away by two of Amy Hempel's other short story collections, I found this a little bit disappointing. Stories are interesting enough, and pleasant enough to read but seem more generic than some of her earlier work. I felt like I could have read them and not recognized tht they were the work of this great author. Most disappointing of all was the novella. Long and rambling and if there was a point I didn't get it. For better books by Amy Hempel, I strongly suggest both Reasons To Live and At The Gates Of The Animal Kingdom.