Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

With her inimitable compassion and wit, Hempel introduces characters who make choices that seem inevitable, and whose longings and misgivings evoke eternal human experience.

For readers who have known Hempel's work for decades and for those who are just discovering her, this indispensable volume contains all the stories in Reasons to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, and The Dog of the Marriage. No reader of great writing should be without it.

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Thoughtful eloquence	Customer Rating:
Amy Hempel has the ability tell a whole life in a few pages. Her stories are perfect.

HEARTBREAKING AND GUT-WRENCHING -- WHAT A COMBINATION

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Anyone who thinks minimalist writing died in the 1990s should read "The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel," which takes us right up to Hempel's most recent collection of short stories, originally published in 2005. The short works of fiction here, representing the entire output of Hempel's career to date, are alive and beating with desire and yearning. Most of them, centering around confused young women on the verge of an emotional breakdown or epiphany, manage to be both heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. What a combination! And what a treat to finally have Hempel's stories all in one place! (On the down side, when read in one big batch, a few of the weaker entries stand out as near-parodies of Hempel's spare style, which might seem deceivingly simple or even intentionally literary.) Of interest: the war of words between minimalists and literary "maximalists" has heated up again, a decade after the battle spilled onto the letters pages of Harper's Magazine. In his introduction, writer Rick Moody, in a fighting mood, offers unqualified praise of Hempel's lean prose while getting in a cheap shot at "those big encyclopedic tomes that the boys, obsessed with the sound of their own voices, were frequently writing in the same period." Could he possibly mean David Foster Wallace?

Prose Poems

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I too discovered Hempel via Chuck Palahniuk, and although at her best she is very, very good -- packing a wallop into a dense little story that only hints at the backstory -- unfortunately I found 432 pages of her a bit too much. Her stories are perhaps best in isolation, where they can creep up on the reader unannounced. After four novel-length collections of shorts, I began to feel her stories were like modern poetry, although written in prose. Each word is obviously carefully chosen, and the arc of the story is plotted to the split-second of reader realization, but most of them, almost all of them except the ones I've come to think of as the "very, very good" ones, ultimately dealt with subjects of no lasting emotional or psychological impact. They are fireflies in the night, dandelion seeds in the wind, smoke in the air, the lingering fragrance of a woman who left the room some time ago. They are a pleasure to read in roughly the same way a well-crafted gun is a pleasure to hold, or a fine automobile is to drive. You can appreciate the craftsmanship... even as you dismiss the usefulness of having all that horsepower serving a need you really don't have.

FALLING DOWN THE CLIFF	Customer Rating:
Life is a runaway. The word is driving west on the Highway One, and the meaning fill all the lanes. No matter where you stand (leftside, righside, in the middle of the road) you will be run over. Crash Amy Hempel and fall down the cliff. Down into the honesty ocean. Down into the language of grief. A friend from Spain recommend this book.

A good story?-somethines

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I like a good short story- more in the style of Damon Runyon or Edward Jones. Hempel's collection were what I would read for an English essay class rather then an enjoyable book of stories. I sometimes fell asleep or missed the story unless I re-read to find the necessary details. I'm still not sure I understand the story of the friend in the hospital. There were some good essays but some do not make a 5 star book. I had to work harder then I think I should with a book I am reading for enjoyment. Few stories hit a memory or made me ponder. I was honestly surprised at how many 5 star reviews she received and at how few readers were in the middle because there was not a commonality in the stories in my opinion. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I had picked it up at odd moments and read a small amount instead of reading it cover to cover. This would be my advise for future readers.