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| reasons to live amy hempel: Reasons to Live Amy Hempel, 1995-07-20 Hempel's now-classic collection of short fiction is peopled by complex characters who have discovered that their safety nets are not dependable and who must now learn to balance on the threads of wit, irony, and spirit. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Sing to It Amy Hempel, 2019-03-26 LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKER AWARD ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 “All the tawdry details I’m dying for are in these stories, but they’re given out like old sweaters—without shame, without guile. Amy Hempel is the writer who makes me feel most affiliated with other humans; we are all living this way—hiding, alone, obsessed—and that’s ok.” —Miranda July From legendary writer Amy Hempel, one of the most celebrated and original voices in American short fiction: a ravishing, sometimes heartbreaking new story collection—her first in over a decade. Amy Hempel is a master of the short story. A multiple award winner, Hempel is highly regarded among writers, reviewers, and readers of contemporary fiction. This new collection, her first since her Collected Stories published more than a decade ago, is a literary event. These fifteen exquisitely honed stories reveal Hempel at her most compassionate and spirited, as she introduces characters, lonely and adrift, searching for connection. In “A Full-Service Shelter,” a volunteer at a dog shelter tirelessly, devotedly cares for dogs on a list to be euthanized. In “Greed,” a spurned wife examines her husband’s affair with a glamorous, older married woman. And in “Cloudland,” the longest story in the collection, a woman reckons with the choice she made as a teenager to give up her newborn infant. Quietly dazzling, these stories are replete with moments of revelation and transcendence and with Hempel’s singular, startling, inimitable sentences. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom Amy Hempel, 1991 A collection of 16 poignant stories about the rogue stresses that threaten the stability of modern women, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom presents tales that are witty, absurd, and beautiful, about coming together, making do, and learning to live with the scars of life. ...One of the great delights of these stories is that they approach the usual cliches of real life and fiction at an unexpectedly oblique angle. And they do so with surprising emotional force.--The Wall Street Journal. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel Amy Hempel, 2007-09-18 With her trademark compassion and wit, Hempel takes readers into the marriages, minor disasters, and moments of revelation in an uneasy America. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Why I Don't Write Susan Minot, 2021-06-15 A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A “clear-eyed and fearless” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of ten short stories from the award-winning author of Evening “Tender, precise, emotional, insightful, and funny.”—JULIANNE MOORE A writer dryly catalogs the myriad reasons she cannot write; an artist bicycles through a protest encampment in lower Manhattan and ruminates on an elusive lover; an old woman on her deathbed calls out for a man other than her husband; a hapless fifteen-year-old boy finds himself in sexual peril; two young people in the 1990s fall helplessly in love, then bicker just as helplessly, tortured by jealousy and mistrust. In each of these stories Susan Minot explores the difficult geometry of human relations, the lure of love and physical desire, and the lifelong quest for meaning and connection. Her characters are all searching for truth, in feeling and in action, as societal norms are upended and justice and coherence flounder. Urgent and immediate, stunningly observed, deeply felt, and gorgeously written, the stories in Why I Don't Write showcase an author at the top of her form. “Intimate, adventurous, stark and lyrical . . . Few short story collections shine as brightly.”—Portland Press-Herald |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules David Sedaris, 2010-04-01 'When apple-picking season ended, I got a Job in a packing plant and gravitated towards short stories, which I could read during my break and reflect upon for the remainder of my shift. A good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit . . . Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping a burglar might come upon it and mistake her words for my own. That an intruder would spend his valuable time reading, that he might be impressed by the description of a crooked face, was something I did not question, as I believed, and still do, that stories can save you'. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Unleashed Amy Hempel, Jim Shepard, 2007-12-18 Now in paperback, an irresistible gift for dog lovers: poems from the dogs' point of view, written by the well known writers and poets who love them. List of contributors: Edward Albee, Jennifer Allen, Danny Anderson, Lynda Barry, Rick Bass, Charles Baxter, Robert Benson, Roy Blount, Jr., Ron Carlson, Jill Ciment, Bernard Cooper, Stephen Dobyns, Mark Doty, Stephen Dunn, Anderson Ferrell, Amy Gerstler, Matthew Graham, Ron Hansen, Brooks Haxton, Cynthia Heimel, Amy Hempel, Noy Hollan, Andrew Hudgins, John Irving, Denis Johnson, R.S. Jones, Walter Kirn, Sheila Kohler, Maxine Kumin, Natalie Kusz, Anne Lamott, Gordon Lish, Ralph Lombreglia, Merrill Markoe, Pearson Marx, Erin McGraw, Heather McHugh, Arthur Miller, George Minot, Susan Minot, Honor Moore, Mary Morris, Alicia Muñoz, Elise Paschen, Padgett Powell, Wyatt Prunty, Lawrence Raab, Mark Richard, John Rybicki, Jeanne Schinto, Bob Shacochis, Jim Shepard, Karen Shepard, Lee Smith, Ben Sonnenberg, Kate Clark Spencer, Gerald Stern, Terese Svoboda, William Tester, Abigail Thomas, Lily Tuck, Sidney Wade, Kathryn Walker, William Wegman |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Why Did I Ever Mary Robison, 2018-01-01 “Tense, moving, and hilarious . . . [A] dark jewel of a novel.” —Francine Prose, O, The Oprah Magazine Three husbands have left her. I.R.S. agents are whamming on her door. And her beloved cat has gone missing. She's back and forth between Melanie, her secluded Southern town, and L.A., where she has a weakening grasp on her job as a script doctor. Having been sacked by most of the studios and convinced that her dealings with Hollywood have fractured her personality, Money Breton talks to herself nonstop. She glues and hammers and paints every item in her place. She forges loving inscriptions in all her books. Through it all, there is her darling puzzling daughter who lives close by but seems ever beyond reach, and her son, the damaged victim of a violent crime under police protection in New York. While both her children seem to be losing all their battles, Money tries for ways and reasons to keep battling. Why Did I Ever is a book of piercing intellect and belligerent humor. Since its first publication in 2002 it has had a profound impact, not only on Robison’s devoted following, but on the shape of the contemporary novel itself. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: The Hand That Feeds You A.J. Rich, 2015-07-07 “An unnerving, elegant page-turner” (Vanity Fair) of psychological suspense about a woman in an intense sexual relationship with a man who turns out to be a predator—by celebrated writers Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment writing as A.J. Rich. Morgan, thirty, is completing her thesis on victim psychology and newly engaged to Bennett, a man more possessive than those she has dated in the past, but also more chivalrous—and the sex is hot. She returns from class one day to find Bennett brutally mauled to death, and her beloved dogs covered in blood. When Morgan tries to locate Bennett’s parents to tell them about their son’s hideous death, she discovers that everything he has told her—where he was born, where he lives in Montreal, where he works—was a lie. He is not the man he said he was, and he had several fiancées, all believing the same promises he gave Morgan. And then, one by one, these other women are murdered. Morgan’s research into Bennett has taken on new urgency: in order to stay alive, she must find out how an intelligent woman like herself, who studies predators, becomes a victim. For readers of Girl on a Train and Luckiest Girl Alive, this “twisty, unsettling thriller” (The New York Times) is an “irresistible” (Vogue) collaboration between two outstanding writers. “The Hand That Feeds You goes from zero to terrifying in about five pages…Once this thriller gets its teeth into you, it doesn’t let go” (The Tampa Bay Times). |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Wifeshopping Steven Wingate, 2008-07-01 Wifeshopping centers on the ultimate human quest: the search for companionship, love, and understanding. These captivating stories feature American men, love-starved and striving, who try and often fail to connect with the women they imagine could be their wives. Some of the women are fiancées, some are new girlfriends, some are strangers who cross the men’s paths for only a few hours or moments. In “Beaching It,” an artist traveling on the summer circuit begins an affair with a rich, married local. In “Me and Paul,” a lonely traveler adopts an alter ego to help him impress a single mother. In “Bill,” a trip to a flea market highlights the essential differences between a man and his fiancée. Throughout this thoroughly entertaining read, Wingate’s sympathetic characterizations reveal both the hopefulness and the heartache behind our earnest but sometimes misguided attempts at intimacy. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: This Cake Is for the Party Sarah Selecky, 2012-11-13 Shortlisted for the acclaimed 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award, and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize Best First Book Award, This Cake Is for the Party has received consistent rave reviews praising debut writer Sarah Selecky. In these ten stories, linked frequently by the sharing of food, Sarah Selecky reaffirms the life of everyday situations with startling significance. For upmarket women's fiction readers that love stories which reflect the joys and pitfalls of marriage, fidelity, fertility, and relationship woes, this collection is a conversation starter. This Cake Is for the Party reminds us that the best parts of our lives are often the least flashy. Reminiscent of early Margaret Atwood, with echoes of Lisa Moore and Ali Smith, these absorbing stories are about love and longing, that touch us in a myriad of subtle and affecting ways. With more than 10,000 copies sold in Canada, where she was named the CBC Book Award's Best New Writer, Sarah Selecky proves she is an exciting new voice with a promising future. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Wittgenstein's Mistress David Markson, 1989 Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well that she is the only person left on earth. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: No One Belongs Here More Than You Miranda July, 2008-05-06 Named a Top Ten Book of the Year by Time, the bestselling debut story collection by the extraordinarily talented Miranda July, award-winning filmmaker, artist, and author of All Fours. In No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July gives the most seemingly insignificant moments a sly potency. A benign encounter, a misunderstanding, a shy revelation can reconfigure the world. Her characters engage awkwardly—they are sometimes too remote, sometimes too intimate. With great compassion and generosity, July reveals her characters’ idiosyncrasies and the odd logic and longing that govern their lives. No One Belongs Here More Than You is a stunning debut, the work of a writer with a spectacularly original and compelling voice. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: A Constant Hum Alice Bishop, 2019-07-02 A young and exciting new literary voice, emerging from one of Australia’s worst natural disasters |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Days of Awe Atalia Omer, 2019-05-21 For many Jewish people in the mid-twentieth century, Zionism was an unquestionable tenet of what it meant to be Jewish. Seventy years later, a growing number of American Jews are instead expressing solidarity with Palestinians, questioning old allegiances to Israel. How did that transformation come about? What does it mean for the future of Judaism? In Days of Awe, Atalia Omer examines this shift through interviews with a new generation of Jewish activists, rigorous data analysis, and fieldwork within a progressive synagogue community. She highlights people politically inspired by social justice campaigns including the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against anti-immigration policies. These activists, she shows, discover that their ethical outrage at US policies extends to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. For these American Jews, the Jewish history of dispossession and diaspora compels a search for solidarity with liberation movements. This shift produces innovations within Jewish tradition, including multi-racial and intersectional conceptions of Jewishness and movements to reclaim prophetic Judaism. Charting the rise of such religious innovation, Omer points toward the possible futures of post-Zionist Judaism. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: The Family Outing Jessi Hempel, 2022-10-04 “Fascinating, funny, and wise, The Family Outing is an affirmation to all of us who know the pain and shame of hiding our truest self, and a stirring invitation into the courage, freedom, and joy of living our whole truth.”—Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed, founder of Together Rising A striking and remarkable literary memoir about one family’s transformation, with almost all of them embracing their queer identities. Jessi Hempel was raised in a seemingly picture-perfect, middle-class American family. But the truth was far from perfect. Her father was constantly away from home, traveling for work, while her stay-at-home mother became increasingly lonely and erratic. Growing up, Jessi and her two siblings struggled to make sense of their family, their world, their changing bodies, and the emotional turmoil each was experiencing. And each, in their own way, was hiding their true self from the world. By the time Jessi reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. Yet coming out was just the beginning, starting a chain reaction of other personal revelations and reckonings that caused each of them to question their place in the world in new and ultimately liberating ways. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Minimalism and the Short Story--Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, and Mary Robison Cynthia Whitney Hallett, 1999 Addresses minimalism as demonstrating a parallel poetic to that of the short story, and analyzes many works of short fiction by Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel and Mary Robison which reflect this relationship. This book traces the evolution of literary minimalism as a by-product of the short story. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Carried Away Alice Munro, 2006-09-26 A dazzling selection of seventeen stories from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro—featuring an Introduction by Margaret Atwood “Munro stands as one of the living colossi of the modern short story, and her Chekhovian realism, her keen psychological insight, her instinctive feel for the emotional arithmetic of domestic life have indelibly stamped contemporary writing.”—The New York Times The stories brought together in Carried Away span a quarter century, drawn from Alice Munro’s earlier works. Here are such favorites as “Royal Beatings” in which a young girl, her father, and stepmother release the tension of their circumstances in a ritual of punishment and reconciliation; “Friend of My Youth” in which a woman comes to understand that her difficult mother is not so very different from herself; and “The Albanian Virgin,” a romantic tale of capture and escape in Central Europe that may or may not be true but that nevertheless comforts the hearer, who is on a desperate adventure of her own. Munro’s incomparable empathy for her characters, the depth of her understanding of human nature, and the grace and surprise of her narrative add up to a richly layered and capacious fiction. Like the World War I soldier in the title story, whose letters from the front to a small-town librarian he doesn’t know change her life forever, Munro’s unassuming characters insinuate themselves in our hearts and take permanent hold. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: The Great Mistake Jonathan Lee, 2021-06-15 An exultant novel of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, about one man's rise to fame and fortune, and his mysterious murder—“engrossing” (Wall Street Journal), “immersive” (The New Yorker), and “seriously entertaining” (The Sunday Times, London). Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing—on Park Avenue in broad daylight, on Friday the thirteenth—shook the city. Born to a struggling farmer, Green was a self-made man without whom there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. But Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death, may finally break free. A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him—yet enlarged it. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Safe as Houses Marie-Helene Bertino, 2012-10 The titular story revolves around an aging English professor who, mourning the loss of his wife, robs other people's homes of their sentimental knick-knacks. In Free Ham, a young dropout wins a ham after her house burns down and refuses to accept it. Has my ham done anything wrong? she asks when the grocery store manager demands that she claim it. In Carry Me Home, Sisters of Saint Joseph, a failed commercial writer moves into the basement of a convent and inadvertently discovers the secrets of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. A girl, hoping to talk her brother out of enlisting in the army, brings Bob Dylan home for Thanksgiving dinner in the quiet, dreamy North Of. In The Idea of Marcel, Emily, a conservative, elegant girl, has dinner with the idea of her ex-boyfriend, Marcel. In a night filled with baffling coincidences, including Marcel having dinner with his idea of Emily, she wonders why we tend to be more in love with ideas than with reality. In and out of the rooms of these gritty, whimsical stories roam troubled, funny people struggling to reconcile their circumstances to some kind of American Ideal and failing, over and over. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: You Beneath Your Skin Damyanti Biswas, 2024-01-23 “Crime fiction with a difference. . . . A novel full of layers and depth, focusing on class and corruption in India with compassion and complexity.” —Sanjida Kay, author of My Mother’s Secret The acclaimed author of the Blue Mumbai Thrillers, including The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon, burst onto the crime fiction scene with this debut novel, which has been optioned by Endemol Shine India for a multi-part drama series. You Beneath Your Skin captures New Delhi in all its cosmopolitan complexity—from its streets to its mansions, its petty thieves to its high-ranking officials—as a serial killer stalks its most vulnerable women. Anjali Morgan is the mother of an autistic teenage son. In her professional life, she’s a busy psychiatrist. In her private life, she’s been having a secret affair with Jatin Bhatt, the married, ambitious special commissioner of crime for the Delhi police. When a string of impoverished women are found raped and murdered, her two lives will collide—with unimaginable consequences . . . The author will donate her share of the proceeds from the sale of this novel to two nonprofit agencies that help women who have survived acid attacks: Project WHY and Stop Acid Attacks. “A gripping tale of murder, corruption and power and their terrifying effects in New Delhi. Highly recommended.” —Alice Clark-Platts, bestselling author of Bitter Fruits “Suspenseful and sensitive, with characters negotiating serious issues of society, this crime novel will keep you awake at night!” —Jo Furniss, bestselling author of All the Little Children “Beautiful writing, strong characters and a story that will stay with me for a long time.” —Jacqueline Ward, bestselling author of The Agreement |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Jacob's Folly Rebecca Miller, 2013-03-12 Jacob is a Jewish peddler living in eighteenth-century France; Leslie and Deirdre Senzatimore are a settled American couple; and Masha is an alluring, young, ultra-Orthodox Jew who is gravely ill. In Jacob’s Folly, these four individuals will find their fates intertwined and the courses of their lives irrevocably altered when Jacob is reincarnated as a housefly in contemporary Long Island. Through the unique lens of Jacob’s consciousness, Miller explores transformation in all its different guises—personal, spiritual and literal. As she considers the hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, and the collision of fate and free will, Miller’s world—which is our own, transfigured by her startlingly clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit—comes to vibrant life. Leslie’s desire to act as hero and rescuer; Jacob’s disastrous marriage to the childlike Hodle, and his intense obsession with Masha—Miller sketches her characters’ interior lives with compassion, subtlety and an exceptionally light touch. Jacob’s Folly is wildly inventive, and ultimately moving; it will leave the reader, no less than its characters, transformed. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Hold Still Lynn Steger Strong, 2017-03-21 A wildly evocative (Elle.com) family portrait that explores the depths and limits of a mother’s love. When Maya Taylor, an English professor with a tendency to hide in her books, sends her daughter to Florida to look after a friend’s child, she does so with the best of intentions; it’s a chance for Ellie, twenty and spiraling, to rebuild her life. But in the sprawling hours of one humid afternoon, Ellie makes a mistake she cannot take back. In two separate timelines—before and after the catastrophe—Maya and Ellie must try to repair their fractured relationship and find a way to transcend not only their differences but also their more troubling similarities. [Melding] psychological insight, precise plotting and limpid prose (Huffington Post), Lynn Steger Strong traces the anatomy of a mistake and the weight of culpability. Hold Still marks a taut and propulsive debut that builds to a perfect crescendo, an ending that is both surprising and true (Marcy Dermansky, author of The Red Car). |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Tiny Crimes Lincoln Michel, Nadxieli Nieto, 2018-06-05 Forty very short stories that reimagine the genre of crime writing from some of today’s most imaginative and thrilling writers “An intriguing take on crime/noir writing, this collection of 40 very short stories by leading and emerging literary voices—Amelia Gray, Brian Evenson, Elizabeth Hand, Carmen Maria Machado, Benjamin Percy, Laura van den Berg and more—investigates crimes both real and imagined. Despite their diminutive size, these tales promise to pack a punch.” —Chicago Tribune, 1 of 25 Hot Books for Summer Tiny Crimes gathers leading and emerging literary voices to tell tales of villainy and intrigue in only a few hundred words. From the most hard–boiled of noirs to the coziest of mysteries, with diminutive double crosses, miniature murders, and crimes both real and imagined, Tiny Crimes rounds up all the usual suspects, and some unusual suspects, too. With illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook and flash fiction by Carmen Maria Machado, Benjamin Percy, Amelia Gray, Adam Sternbergh, Yuri Herrera, Julia Elliott, Elizabeth Hand, Brian Evenson, Charles Yu, Laura van den Berg, and more, Tiny Crimes scours the underbelly of modern life to expose the criminal, the illegal, and the depraved. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Knocked Down Aileen Weintraub, 2022-03 A laugh-out-loud memoir about a free-spirited, commitment-phobic Brooklyn girl who, after a whirlwind romance, finds herself living in a rickety farmhouse, pregnant, and faced with five months of doctor-prescribed bed rest because of unusually large fibroids. Aileen Weintraub has been running away from commitment her entire life, hopping from one job and one relationship to the next. When her father suddenly dies, she flees her Jewish Brooklyn community for the wilds of the country, where she unexpectedly falls in love with a man who knows a lot about produce, tractors, and how to take a person down in one jiu-jitsu move. Within months of saying “I do” she’s pregnant, life is on track, and then wham! Her doctor slaps a high-risk label on her uterus and sends her to bed for five months. As her husband’s bucolic (and possibly haunted) farmhouse begins to collapse and her marriage starts to do the same, Weintraub finally confronts her grief for her father while fighting for the survival of her unborn baby. In her precarious situation, will she stay or will she once again run away from it all? Knocked Down is an emotionally charged, laugh-out-loud roller-coaster ride of survival and growth. It is a story about marriage, motherhood, and the risks we take. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Bobcat and Other Stories Rebecca Lee, 2014-06-25 Winner of the 2013 Believer Book Award. At turns heartbreaking and wise, tender and wry Bobcat and Other Stories establishes Rebecca Lee as one of the most powerful and original voices in contemporary fiction. A university student on her summer abroad is offered the unusual task of arranging a friend's marriage. Secret infidelities and one guest's dubious bobcat-related injury propel a Manhattan dinner party to its unexpected conclusion. Students at an elite architecture retreat seek the wisdom of their revered mentor but end up learning more about themselves and one another than about their shared craft. In these acutely observed and scaldingly honest stories Lee gives us characters who are complex and flawed, cracking open their fragile beliefs and exposing the paradoxes that lie within their romantic and intellectual pursuits. Whether they're in the countryside of the American Midwest, on a dusty prairie road in Saskatchewan, or among the skyscrapers and voluptuous hills of Hong Kong, the terrain is never as difficult to navigate as their own histories and desires. Rebecca Lee is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The City Is a Rising Tide and the short story collection Bobcat and Other Stories. She has been published in The Atlantic and Zoetrope, and in 2001 she received a National Magazine Award for her short fiction. Originally from Saskatchewan, Lee is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is now a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. 'Bobcat and Other Stories is nothing short of brilliant. Rebecca Lee writes with the unflinching, cumulatively devastating precision of Chekhov and Munro, peeling back layer after layer of illusion until we're left with the truth of ourselves ...This extraordinary story collection is sure to confirm its author as one of the best writers of her generation.' Ben Fountain, author of Billy Flynn's Long Halftime Walk 'Mesmirisingly strange...[Lee's] eccentric eloquence...makes Bobcat so potent and powerful.' New York Times 'In all these stories, confused, sometimes misdirected men and women struggle to figure out their places in the world, stumble into often unhappy situations and sometimes, to their great misfortune, get exactly what they were hoping for...Lee captures little pieces of all of us and she does it in language so delicate and precise that you'll re-read passages for the joy of it.' Star Tribune 'Slim, sly and brilliant.' Oprah.com 'Lee writes with an unflinching eye toward the darkest and saddest aspects of life, often finding humor where least expected. This fresh, provocative collection, peerless in its vehement elucidation of contemporary foibles, is not to be missed.' Publisher's Weekly 'This is a potent, quietly daring and sturdily imagined collection, rich with a subtlety in short supply in our current short-fiction landscape, where writers seem to settle for lobbing verbal grenades in the reader's general direction. In stories like Bobcat and Fialta, there is the real sense of significance, as though a whole subway system's worth of meaning is roaring beneath the text, ready to whisk the reader anywhere they need to go.' National Post |
| reasons to live amy hempel: I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying Matthew Salesses, 2013-02-01 I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, a novel in flash fiction, is a raw, honest look at parenting, commitment, morality, and the spaces that grow between and within us when we don't know what to say. In these 115 titled chapters, a man, who learns he has a 5-year-old son, is caught between the life he knows and a life he may not yet be ready for. This is a book that tears down the boundaries in relationships, sentences, origin and identity, no matter how quickly its narrator tries to build them up. Matthew Salesses' I'm Not Saying, I'm Not Saying is an absolute stunner of a novel. Told in short, sharp vignettes with prose that is taut, yet overflowing with meaning, this is the story of a year in the life of a complex and haunted, cobbled together family. The beauty of Salesses' writing here lies in his fearlessness, the emotional blows to the heart and head and gut he's willing to deliver, as if to say: This, this is life And we are all, in one way or another, survivors. -Kathy Fish, author of Together We Can Bury It Matthew Salesses has written an extraordinary and startlingly original novel that explores connection and disconnection, the claims and limitations of the self, and the shifting terrain of truth. Poetic, unforgettable, shot through with fury and yearning, I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying captures in clear and chilling flashes our capacity for the cruelty and tenderness of love. -Catherine Chung, author of Forgotten Country In Matt Salesses's smart novel-in-shorts, a newly-minted father flees telling his own story by any means necessary-by sarcasm, by denial, by playful and precise wordplay-rarely allowing space for his emerging feelings to linger. But the truth of who we might be is not so easily escaped, and it is in the accumulation of many such moments that our narrator, like us, is revealed: both the people we have been, and the better people we might be lucky enough to one day hope to become. -Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying renders the messiness of life, family, love in its myriad complex forms-romance lost and found, blood ties, squandered, unrequited-via 115 micro-stories that add up to a pointillist masterpiece. -Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody's Daughter Through a series of provocative, beautiful, and at times, brutally raw shorts, Matthew Salesses creates a complex, vulnerable portrait of modern fatherhood and masculinity. Narrated by our seemingly reckless, yet hyper-observant narrator, these vignettes build with tension and trepidation, until we, like the members of this reluctant, fractured family, realize the weight, burden and comfort that only comes from finally belonging. -Aimee Phan, author of The Reeducation of Cherry Truong |
| reasons to live amy hempel: The Oxford Book of American Short Stories Joyce Carol Oates, 1992 This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Ill Nature Joy Williams, 2015-10-10 Most of us watch with mild concern the fast disappearing wild spaces or the recurrence of pollution - related crises such as oil spills, toxic blooms in fertilizer-enriched rivers, and the increasing violence in our own country. Joy Williams does much more than watch. With guts and passion, she sounds the alarm over the general disconnection from the natural world that our consumer culture has created. The culling of elephants, electron-probed chimpanzees, and the vanishing wetlands are just some of her subjects. Razor-sharp, controversial, scathingly opinionated, and refreshingly unafraid of conflict, Williams refuses to compromise as she lashes out at the greed of Americans and decries our own turpitude. It is not enough to mourn the passing of the natural world, Ill Nature shouts. Get out of our homes and our cars and our cubicles and do something...now. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction Michael Martone, 2012-11-27 Fifty remarkable short stories from a range of contemporary fiction authors including Junot Diaz, Amy Tan, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, and more, selected from a survey of more than five hundred English professors, short story writers, and novelists. Contributors include Russell Banks, Donald Barthelme, Rick Bass, Richard Bausch, Charles Baxter, Amy Bloom, T.C. Boyle, Kevin Brockmeier, Robert Olen Butler, Sandra Cisneros, Peter Ho Davies, Janet Desaulniers, Junot Diaz, Anthony Doerr, Stuart Dybek, Deborah Eisenberg, Richard Ford, Mary Gaitskill, Dagoberto Gilb, Ron Hansen, A.M. Homes, Mary Hood, Denis Johnson, Edward P. Jones, Thom Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Leavitt, Kelly Link, Reginald McKnight, David Means, Susan Minot , Rick Moody, Bharati Mukherjee, Antonya Nelson, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O’Brien, Daniel Orozco, Julie Orringer, ZZ Packer, Annie Proulx, Stacey Richter, George Saunders, Joan Silber, Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Sontag, Amy Tan, Melanie Rae Thon, Alice Walker, and Steve Yarbrough. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: New American Stories Ben Marcus, 2015-07-21 In New American Stories, the beautiful, the strange, the melancholy, and the sublime all comingle to show the vast range of the American short story . In this remarkable anthology, Ben Marcus has corralled a vital and artistically singular crowd of contemporary fiction writers. Collected here are practitioners of deep realism, mind-blowing experimentalism, and every hybrid in between. Luminaries and cult authors stand side by side with the most compelling new literary voices. Nothing less than the American short story renaissance distilled down to its most relevant, daring, and unforgettable works, New American Stories puts on wide display the true art of an American idiom. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Ms Hempel Chronicles Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, 2011-02-01 Ms. Beatrice Hempel, English teacher, is new - new to teaching, new to her school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her devoted father. Overwhelmed by her newness, she struggles to figure out quite what is expected of her - in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words into the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class? Or not? Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum finds her characters at their most vulnerable, then explores those precarious moments in sharp, graceful prose. Ms Hempel Chronicles takes the reader on a journey down the rabbit hole to the wonderland of middle school, memory, daydreaming, and the extraordinary business of growing up. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Monkeys Susan Minot, 2010-10-26 DIV DIVMinot’s bestselling debut: A moving novel of familial love and endurance in the face of shattering tragedyDIV /div/divDIVMonkeys is the remarkable story of a decade in the life of the Vincents, a colorful Irish Catholic family from the Boston suburbs. On the surface, they seem happy with their vivacious mother Rosie at the helm. But underneath, the Vincents struggle to maintain the appearance of wealth and stability while dealing with the effects of their father’s alcoholism. When a sudden accident strikes, their love for one another is tested like never before./divDIV /divDIVWritten by the bestselling author of Evening, Monkeys is a powerful story of one family’s struggle to overcome life-changing tribulations and Minot’s wrenching ode to the ties that bind even the most wounded of families./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features a new illustrated biography of Susan Minot, including artwork by the author and rare documents and photos from her personal collection./div /div |
| reasons to live amy hempel: The Elephant of Belfast S. Kirk Walsh, 2021-04-06 Inspired by true events, this vivid and moving story of a young woman zookeeper and the elephant she's compelled to protect through the German blitz of Belfast during WWll speaks to not only the tragedy of the times, but also to the ongoing sectarian tensions that still exist in Northern Ireland today—perfect for readers of historical and literary fiction alike. Belfast, October 1940. Twenty-year-old zookeeper Hettie Quin arrives at the city docks in time to meet her new charge: an orphaned three-year-old Indian elephant named Violet. As Violet adjusts to her new solitary life in captivity and Hettie mourns the recent loss of her sister and the abandonment of her father, new storm clouds gather. A world war rages, threatening a city already reeling from escalating tensions between British Loyalists and those fighting for a free and unified Ireland. The relative peace is shattered by air-raid sirens on the evening of Easter Tuesday 1941. Over the course of the next five hours, hundreds of bombs rain down upon Belfast, claiming almost a thousand lives and decimating the city. Dodging the debris and carnage of the Luftwaffe attack, Hettie runs to the zoo to make sure that Violet is unharmed. The harrowing ordeal and ensuing aftermath set the pair on a surprising path that highlights the indelible, singular bond that often brings mankind and animals together during horrifying times. Inspired by a largely forgotten chapter of World War II, S. Kirk Walsh deftly renders the changing relationship between Hettie and Violet, and their growing dependence on each other for survival and solace. The Elephant of Belfast is a complicated and beguiling portrait of hope and resilience--and how love can sustain us during the darkest moments of our lives. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Since You Ask Louise Wareham, 2004-05-01 From a Conneticut sanitarium, 24 year-old Betsy Scott tells her doctor a story about the destructive secrets in an outwardly successful family. Since You Ask is about the the origins of sexual compulsion, and the way in which one young woman attempts to overcome it. Born on the island of Antigua, Betsy and her brothers - the drug addict Raymond and the cool, detached Eric - are relocated to Manhatten. There, Betsy begins series of secret affairs that take her into increasingly dark situations. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Emperor of the Air Ethan Canin, 2015-02-03 The award-winning, bestselling debut collection of “beautifully crafted stories” from the acclaimed author of The Doubter’s Almanac (Chicago Sun-Times). Highly acclaimed and wildly successful upon its debut, Ethan Canin’s now classic collection of nine stories combines exquisite precision, humor, and a rare maturity of observation, capturing those miraculous moments when life opens up and presents itself to us. Full of life, rich with personal history, plot, and revelation, the stories in Emperor of the Air are the work of an extraordinarily gifted young writer. Capturing a wide range of vivid characters and their unforgettable moments of ache, epiphany, humor, and wisdom, Canin would go on to prove himself as “the most mature and accomplished novelist of his generation” (NPR). “Dazzling . . . at times breathtaking, at other times heartbreaking.” —Walker Percy “A glowing first book . . . An engrossing and unified collection.” —Matthew Gilbert, The Boston Globe |
| reasons to live amy hempel: The Second Season Emily Adrian, 2021-07-27 Ruth Devon starred for Georgetown Basketball back in college—until she injured her knee, married her coach, and found a new career calling games on the radio. Twenty years later, Ruth and her now-ex-husband, Lester, are two of the most famous faces in sports media. When Lester decides to retire from the announcers’ booth, Ruth goes after his job. If she gets it, she will be the first woman to call NBA games on national television. For now, Ruth is reporting from the sideline of the NBA finals, immersed in the high-pressure spectacle of the post-season. But in a deserted locker room at halftime, Ruth makes a discovery that shatters her vision of her future. Instantly, she is torn between the two things she has always wanted most: the game and motherhood. With warmth and incisive observation, Adrian brings to life the obsessions, emotions, and drama of fandom. The Second Season asks why, how, and whom we watch, while offering a rich and complicated account of motherhood, marriage, and ambition. Adrian’s character study of Ruth Devon illuminates a beautiful basketball mind—and the struggle of a woman who claims authority in a male-dominated world. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Death and So Forth Gordon Lish, 2021-04-13 With Death and So Forth, esteemed writer and editor Gordon Lish returns with a new book of scintillating short fiction. With his trademark precision, wit, and wiliness, Lish writes outside the margins and around the edges of the death, loss, and the fractiousness and fragmentation of language. Death and So Forth collects a number of Lish's acclaimed stories and introduces eight new fictions, including a tribute to Denis Johnson and so many others lost in the course of a long life. Brilliant and sharp-eyed, this is a treasure for fans of Gordon Lish, new and lifelong. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Collected Fictions Gordon Lish, 2010 This definitive collection of Lish's short work includes a forword by the author and 106 stories, many of which Lish has revised exclusively for this edition--Page 4 of cover. |
| reasons to live amy hempel: Free Love Tessa Hadley, 2022-02-01 “Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts.”—Hilary Mantel From the bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past comes a compulsive new novel about one woman’s sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London. 1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family’s upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them. With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters’ inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free Love is an irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our selves – a novel that showcases Hadley’s unrivaled ability to “put on paper a consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands your own” (Lily King, author of Euphoria). |
REASON Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of REASON is a statement offered in explanation or justification. How to use reason in a sentence. Synonym Discussion of Reason.
REASON | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
reason for The reason for the disaster was engine failure, not human error. [ + question word ] The reason why grass is green was a mystery to the little boy. [ + (that) ] The reason (that) I'm …
1324 Synonyms & Antonyms for REASON - Thesaurus.com
There is no acceptable reason for shooting an unarmed reporter — short of a life-ending cerebral infarction that causes you to draw and fire indiscriminately. DUP leader Robinson said there is …
REASON Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Reason, cause, motive are terms for a circumstance (or circumstances) which brings about or explains certain results.
REASON definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
The reason for something is a fact or situation which explains why it happens or what causes it to happen. Who would have a reason to want to kill her? [NOUN to-infinitive] ...the reason why …
reason noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes ...
Definition of reason noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. [countable] a cause or an explanation for something that has happened or that somebody has done. He said no but …
Reason - definition of reason by The Free Dictionary
A declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or conviction: What reasons did she give for leaving? c. A fact or cause that explains why something exists or has occurred: The reason …
What does REASONS mean? - Definitions.net
Apr 26, 2016 · In the most general terms, a reason is a consideration which justifies or explains an action, a belief, an attitude, or a fact.Normative reasons are what people appeal to when …
reason - WordReference.com Dictionary of English
1. purpose, end, aim, object, objective. Reason, cause, motive are terms for a circumstance (or circumstances) which brings about or explains certain results. A reason is an explanation of a …
Reason Definition & Meaning - YourDictionary
Reason definition: The basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction.
REASON Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of REASON is a statement offered in explanation or justification. How to use reason in a sentence. Synonym Discussion of Reason.
REASON | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
reason for The reason for the disaster was engine failure, not human error. [ + question word ] The reason why grass is green was a mystery to the little boy. [ + (that) ] The reason (that) I'm …
1324 Synonyms & Antonyms for REASON - Thesaurus.com
There is no acceptable reason for shooting an unarmed reporter — short of a life-ending cerebral infarction that causes you to draw and fire indiscriminately. DUP leader Robinson said there is …
REASON Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Reason, cause, motive are terms for a circumstance (or circumstances) which brings about or explains certain results.
REASON definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
The reason for something is a fact or situation which explains why it happens or what causes it to happen. Who would have a reason to want to kill her? [NOUN to-infinitive] ...the reason why …
reason noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes ...
Definition of reason noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. [countable] a cause or an explanation for something that has happened or that somebody has done. He said no but …
Reason - definition of reason by The Free Dictionary
A declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or conviction: What reasons did she give for leaving? c. A fact or cause that explains why something exists or has occurred: The reason …
What does REASONS mean? - Definitions.net
Apr 26, 2016 · In the most general terms, a reason is a consideration which justifies or explains an action, a belief, an attitude, or a fact.Normative reasons are what people appeal to when …
reason - WordReference.com Dictionary of English
1. purpose, end, aim, object, objective. Reason, cause, motive are terms for a circumstance (or circumstances) which brings about or explains certain results. A reason is an explanation of a …
Reason Definition & Meaning - YourDictionary
Reason definition: The basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction.
