Long admired for her "tough-minded, original, and fully felt" short stories ("The New York Times Book Review"), Hempel takes her art to new heights in her first remarkable novella--as well as in her latest collection of stories that comment on life's ironies with decidedly offbeat intelligence.
Critically acclaimed master of the short story Amy Hempel's Tumble Home is narrated by people with skewed visions of home. Not exactly crazy, they become obsessed and irrational as their inner logic leads them astray. In the title novella, a woman living in a psychiatric halfway house writes to a man she has met only once. Proceeding in brief vignettes that link and illuminate, she recounts her peculiar life with the other patients. The accretions of anecdote lead deeper and deeper into the psyche and history of the narrator, gradually revealing the reason for her urgent letter.