Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories
by Amy Hempel
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Book Summary Information
Author: Amy HempelEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-05-28
ISBN: 0684838877
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Scribner
Book Reviews of Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories
Book Review: Don't let the shortness and simplicity fool you...
Summary: 5 Stars
...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.
Summary of Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories
Long admired for her "tough-minded, original, and fully felt short stories (Sheila Ballyntyne, The New York Times Book Review), Amy Hempel takes her art to new heights in her first remarkable novella -- was well as in her latest collection of stories that comment on life's ironies with decidedly offbeat intelligence."As we read, we learn that to discover meaning in stray pieces of our universe is a happy, curative act....Hempel makes haunting bits of beauty out of motley scraps". -- Adam Begley, People
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.
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