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The Dog of the Marriage by Amy Hempel
| Published: 11th October 2011 11:48 |
The Dog of the Marriage by Amy Hempel
'The toughest part of reading The Dog of the Marriage is how much your jaw muscles ache from the effort it takes not to laugh and cry in front of strangers. Amy Hempel is my god among writers'
It's all about the sentences. The Dog of the Marriage is the collected short stories of Amy Hempel, from her 1985 book 'Reasons to Live' to the latest addition in 2005 'The Dog of the Marriage'.
Amy Hempel's stories are urbane, witty, somber, dazzling, oblique and quietly, desperately heroic. Her sentences do not rage or posture the way most authors do. They ache. Her 1985 collection, 'Reasons to Live' contains the most extensively anthologised story of the last quarter century, 'In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried'. In this story the narrator tries to buoy the spirits of a dying friend through the distraction of the well-turned anecdote.
Amy Hempel's next book 'At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom', published in 1990, took five years to write despite comprising only 137 pages. That may not sound like a big book, but when it's filled with stunning stories that make you laugh, cry, then laugh again, who cares that it's shorter than one of those big encyclopedic tomes that the boys, obsessed with the sound of their own voices, frequently trot out.
She breaks your heart. First and foremost. That evil Amy Hempel. That's the first bit they teach in the workshop she attended before her first novel. A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart. With Amy Hempel, you always take the bullet without knowing it's coming.
Enter 'Tumble Home', published in 1997 and taking 7 years to write, is a story in which the narrator addreses an absent lover directly, from institutional confines, her tired voice given mainly to the little amusements of her daily life, though much around her is about suffering and the attempt to recover from it.
Every sentence isn't crafted, it's tortured over. Every quote and joke is something so funny or profound enough that you'll remember it for years. Her stories are studded and set with these compelling bits. Teachers talk about how students need to have an emotional breakthrough, an "ah-hah!" discovery moment in order to retain information. Hempel's work is nothing but these flashes, and every flash makes you ache with recognition.
ISBN - 0-7432-8946-3
Publisher - Quercus
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