Tumble Home (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Amy Hempel is the much-praised author of two previous books of short fiction, REASONS TO LIVE: STORIES (1985) and AT THE GATES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM: STORIES (1990), tightly controlled, highly-compressed stories that happen swiftly: flash-flood-like fictions driven forth by situational and syntactical acrobats composed by a writer who is brave enough to embrace certain uncertainty in her quest to write a story of unpredictable and lasting power. Such masterful pint-sized dramas as “In a Tub,” “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried,” and “The Harvest,” are already considered to be classic examples of the never-before places that can be tapped into by a writer who dares to make the short-story form feel less contrived, and less predictable, made more energized by the actual sentences, the sheer blasts of language, one chooses to put forth onto the page. Here in her third assembly of short fiction, TUMBLE HOME, Hempel continues to explore and trample over new terrain, especially in what stands as her longest and fullest work to date, the title novella “Tumble Home,” an epistolary story that unfolds slowly, precisely, through a series of anecdotal reports/responses sent out into the world by a woman who is “a guest” staying at a “home” for the mentally/spiritually/emotionally estranged. Not unlike the characters from the seven other shorter fictions that flesh out this volume, the writer whose long letter makes up the title entry of this collection approaches, sometimes even achieves, moments of brief, never-before-seen clarity and grace. She is, like most of Hempel’s heroines, smart, witty, and tender-heartedly vulnerable, though at the same time never falling totally victim, never failing to go on to whatever or wherever comes next.

What comes next from Amy Hempel? One can only hope, and wish, that she too finds a place where she might want to linger a little while longer: that Hempel’s next effort will be that long-awaited, much longed-for first novel—the work that will say for itself, to even the loudest of naysayers, that Amy Hempel has not only arrived, but that she is here to say.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. XCIII, May 1, 1997, p. 1478.

Elle. XII, May, 1997, p. 92.

Kirkus Reviews. LXV, March 15, 1997, p. 402.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. July 27, 1997, p. 7.

Mirabella. May, 1997, p. 77.

The New York Times Book Review. CII, July 27, 1997, p. 9.

Newsweek. CXXIX, April 28, 1997, p. 78.

Publishers Weekly. CCXLIV, March 10, 1997, p. 47.

The Washington Post Book World. XXVII, April 13, 1997, p. 6.