From Powells.com
The Best Books of 2019 (So Far)
Staff Pick
I loved every story of this concise, precise collection. As the title suggests, Hempel's prose sings — to a harmed and harmful world, to shelter dogs, to cuckolds and climate change and children given away at birth. Not a soothing song, but an aching-loving-necessary one. Recommended By Darla M., Powells.com
Don't mistake Hempel's one-paragraph stories for gimmicks; they're powerful and precise enough to take my breath away with a devastating sentence casually dispensed. And oof, that novella at the end! Simmering with loss and tension, it has haunted me for weeks. Recommended By Eva F., Powells.com
Amy Hempel’s first short story collection in over a decade ranges from short, addictive vignettes to the gorgeous 62-page “Cloudland,” all with delicious peculiarity, sparseness, blunt humanity, dark humor, and Hempel’s beautifully honed talent for circling around a truth while somehow, at the same time, diving to the heart of it. Recommended By Gigi L., Powells.com
In Sing to It, stories told in just a handful of spare paragraphs glint like small precious stones, while others fill page after page with uncommonly brilliant prose, throwing the lid back on the treasure chest. This remarkable collection — Hempel's first in over a decade — was every bit worth the wait. Recommended By Tove H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
“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.
Review
“[Sing to It] offers Hempel at her best: oscillating between hilarity and pain in a way that feels utterly human” Time Magazine
Review
“Turning the pages [in Sing to It] is like swimming in a lake and suddenly finding the bottom drop out beneath you, leaving you to get your bearings amid unanticipated depths.” Ruth Franklin, The Atlantic
Review
"A dizzying array of short fiction...Hempel packs a lot into her narrow spaces: nuance, longing, love, and loss. The brilliance of the writing resides in the way Hempel manages to tell us everything in spite of her narrator's reticence, teaching us to read between the lines." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Review
"Short story virtuoso Hempel's first collection since 2006 consists of 15 characteristically bold, disconcerting, knockout stories that highlight her signature style with its condensed prose, quirky narrators, and touching, disturbing, transcendent moments." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
"Gorgeously distilled, archly witty, and daringly empathetic tales...Hempel is a master miniaturist, capturing in exquisitely nuanced sentences the sensuous, cerebral, and spiritual cascade of existence, homing in on pain and humor and the wisdom each can engender." Booklist
About the Author
Amy Hempel is the author of Sing to It, The Dog of the Marriage, Tumble Home, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Reasons to Live, and the coeditor of Unleashed. Her stories have appeared in Harper’s, Vanity Fair, GQ, Tin House, The Harvard Review, The Quarterly, and have been widely anthologized, including Best American Short Stories and The Best Nonrequired Reading. She teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Bennington College, and at Stony Brook Southampton. She lives near New York City.