A quietly powerful presence in American fiction during the past two decades, these collected stories show the true scale of Amy Hempel’s achievement. Her compact fictions, populated by smart, neurotic and somewhat damaged narrators, speak grandly to the longings and insecurities in all of us and in a voice that is bracingly direct and sneakily profound. With her trademark compassion and wit, Hempel takes readers into the marriages, minor disasters and moments of revelation in an uneasy America.
