AMY HEMPEL | The Collected Works

I will never – and I mean never – understand why this woman is not better known. I am yet to meet a fellow reader and I say “Amy Hempel” and they go “Oh wow, of course. Amy Hempel.” They go “Who?” And I think “Seriously? Come on.”

The fact that her books keep going out of print might have something to do with it.

'Unimprovable' is a word I've seen written about her and I thought, although she probably wouldn't agree, she'd for sure like the word. This woman agonizes over single sentences and they still come out like the most fluid stream of perfection. Like she just did it off the cuff.

Chuck Palahniuk wrote - “You read Amy Hempel's The Harvest. After that, you're ruined. I'm not kidding.”. He's talking about writers. He says - “You will never write this well. You won't learn this part until you've ruined a lot of paper, wasting your free time with a pen in one hand for years and years.”

Poor old Chuck. I feel his pain.

I couldn't tell you for sure what it is about her. She just comes at you from these inconceivable angles. She carries you, strange little minimalist fact by fact into the most disconcerting emotional places. You suddenly find yourself somewhere thinking 'wait, how did I get here?' She makes you chuckle and sigh and then delivers the most devastating blows that can cripple you for hours. And yet she has the deftest touch. Subtle, even when she's socking you with body shots.

Personally I'm not big into short stories. I like something I can get my teeth into. I want to disappear into a good book and never come out. But these stories of hers – whether they last a page or twenty – they are every one of them the perfect size.

She's not to everyone's taste I have discovered. But people borrowing my copy and then passing it back frowning at me, wondering why I'm so head-over-heels... they drop in my estimation. They plummet. I think – 'who are you?'

I know that's probably rude but this woman's writing, it's just so real. I feel like she is offering these actual pieces of her soul, each of them wrapped up in a home-made sweater. I feel like, I want to sit and drink wine with this person, ask her how her day was.

I don't know, but you could do a lot worse than trying to find a copy. She has, I think, five short collections or you can hunt down the collected works and cherish it forever, take your time getting to know her.

If you like that kind of thing...