- Hardcover: 160 pages
- Publisher: Scribner (May 7 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684833751
- ISBN-13: 978-0684833750
- Product Dimensions: 18.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
So short yet long,
By Brandon S (Indy) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories (Paperback)
Hempel's slim novella 'Tumble Home,' has a hypnotic prose that leaves the reader concentrating on every word. The short stories are so earthy you feel as if you're among family. Minimalism has never been used so effectively with Hempel's description of everyday americana.
5.0 out of 5 stars
"I am not quite myself, I think."--Tumble Home,
By A Customer
This review is from: Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories (Paperback)
Amy Hempel's beautiful novella, Tumble Home, takes the form of a an epistolary journal. A woman in an upscale halfway house--different from mental health facilities I have visited-- writes a letter to an artist she has met only once. Much of this letter is hilarious: she writes about pet therapy at a nearby veterinarian's, and watching TV with her fellow patients. "There is a television in here now. I'll watch whatever is on, such as the swimsuit special that I watched with Warren. It was actually about the making of the special, and it intercut footage of the models arching their backs in the surf with segments in which the photographer described what he had to do to get that shot. Warren became irritated by the photographer's intrusion. He said it was like being a teenager and trying to masturbate to Petticoat Junction..." Hempel is a talented poet whose work I respect and love. This novella could be paired with Hortense Calisher's In the Slammer with Carol Smith, a novel written in the form of a journal by an intelligent bag lady who has been homeless.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing,
By Brad Penrith "BPen" (Manassas, VA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories (Paperback)
Hempel is a master at weaving different voices and styles through her short stories and novellas. She, at times, borders on almost a prosetry in her work which some may find difficult, but I believe is bold, insightful, and some of the best writing in America today.
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