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Reasons to Live

by Amy Hempel

4.17 · rating details · 1,074 ratings · 129 reviews

The author of "At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom" presents a "tough-minded, original, an fully felt" (Sheila Ballantyne) collection of stories that "approach the usual cliches of real life and fiction at an unexpectedly oblique angle. And they do so with amazing force" ("Wall Street Journal"). *Lightning Print On Demand Title

Paperback, 144 pages

Published July 20th 1995 by Harper Perennial (first published 1985)

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May 16, 2008

Colin Miller rated it

Shelves: short-stories-novellas, favorite-of-this-author

If you’ve been keeping track of my reviews thus far, you know I don’t rate very highly, but Amy Hempel’s Reasons to Live is the standard to which all other fiction books must rise. Long before Chuck Palahniuk’s frenzied fan base or the New York Times 2006 Book of the Year Award drove her collected stories to mass acclaim, I was graced to read Hempel’s widely anthologized “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” in late 1998. It’s a story about a woman visiting her terminally ill friend in hos...moreIf you’ve been keeping track of my reviews thus far, you know I don’t rate very highly, but Amy Hempel’s Reasons to Live is the standard to which all other fiction books must rise. Long before Chuck Palahniuk’s frenzied fan base or the New York Times 2006 Book of the Year Award drove her collected stories to mass acclaim, I was graced to read Hempel’s widely anthologized “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” in late 1998. It’s a story about a woman visiting her terminally ill friend in hospital and the freedom she feels when she’s not there. Many of the stories in Reasons to Live center on people losing their safety nets—to fires, to fear, to lost friends and children. They are short, succinct, and often slash their way to the depths of emotion.

Amy Hempel says more with one sentence than most authors say with a whole novel.

If you miss a sentence, you can get lost and have to backtrack. That’s minimalism for you. Standout pieces in the collection include “Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep,” “The Man in Bogotá,” and “Tonight is a Favor to Holly.” Not every story is great though. In fact, some are downright awful. I got nervous when I initially bought the collection and found the first story, “In a Tub,” so lackluster. Still, I appreciate that Reasons to Live has enough risk in it to where it can miss the mark. Maybe that’s what makes a five-star book—that you even appreciate its flaws.

I can’t say all that makes a five-star book, but I know that with Amy Hempel I was simultaneously glad and disappointed when she got popular. Glad because she really does deserve it and there are too many great stories that go unnoticed next to some blasé fiction writer’s latest rehash; yet disappointed because there are some things that you wish could stay yours, even if that’s ridiculous since they never were yours to begin with. You don’t loan a five-star book to just anyone. You can’t risk that. (I had to learn that the hard way.) Though Amy Hempel’s other collections are still very good, they note the slow downhill slide from Reasons to Live, and with the exception of the now out of print At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, I don’t feel compelled to look for them at used bookstores. Whatever equates to a five-star book, Reasons to Live is it for me.
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May 02, 2007

Sam rated it

Shelves: shortfiction

Amy Hempel's single biggest strength is combining apparent simplicity with deep reserves of meaning; her stories tend to be short, full of small sentences, and intentionally opaque, so much so that some people have taken to lumping her into the Carver/Wolf American Minimalism sort of school. I think this is a terrible mistake. Carver and Wolf are capital R realists; the spaces between the words - the part of the iceberg hidden underwater, as they told you in English class - tend to contain som...moreAmy Hempel's single biggest strength is combining apparent simplicity with deep reserves of meaning; her stories tend to be short, full of small sentences, and intentionally opaque, so much so that some people have taken to lumping her into the Carver/Wolf American Minimalism sort of school. I think this is a terrible mistake. Carver and Wolf are capital R realists; the spaces between the words - the part of the iceberg hidden underwater, as they told you in English class - tend to contain some sort of repressed emotion, some sense of character. It's someone writing you a letter from summer camp and not telling you their mother died. That sort of thing.

What Hempel is doing with the gaps is a whole other technique, one which takes an opposite tack from more realistic minimalism. In a story like "Celia is Back", Hempel uses the lack of information to bend the story as she sees fit, by taking the conventions she's only half-created (setting, characters) and then warping them in a single sentence that changes the entire flow of the story. This is Surrealism with minimal construction. It has very little to do with Carver or Wolf, and more to do with writers like Denis Johnson.

Even when Hempel hews more closely to a realistic plot and characters, the ones she chooses have little in common with the working people about which Carver usually writes. "Nashville in Ashes" is about the widow of a veterinarian. "Tonight is a Favor to Holly" is about women who are emotionally trapped in their beachfront apartment. Both of them contain fantastic elements; in the former, a dog pushes his owner's wheelchair down the sidewalk, and in the latter a moving van flies off the side of a cliff, and is thus inducted into the club of those who have fallen to their deaths in the same spot.

If for no other reason, you should read this book because it contains "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried", one of the best short stories I've ever read.

It takes extreme skill to do this without unhinging the narrative, especially since many of these stories don't last beyond six or seven pages. Hempel is above all a master of control, and I don't think anyone reading these stories can fail to notice the craft that went into them. (less)

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Jul 10, 2007

Ryan Faulkner rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

okay, jesus. how do you even start to tackle the subject of amy hempel? i'll make a list of things that make this book better than anything that will ever make it into the top ten of the bestseller lists:

[1] minimalist (or "miniaturist," if you ask hempel) writing style that is unique and moves at a rapid clip
[2] emotional displacement
[3] subtlety.

that last one is particularly important, since i think one of the more difficult challenges any writ...more

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Jun 25, 2008

Steven rated it

Shelves: short-stories

As with Carver, Hempel is only a minimalist when read shallowly and with certain misperceptions in mind about what detail consists of, and, most probably, already bent on affixing reductive labels on writers rather that appreciating their essence. It doesn't surprise me that she is more popular now than when this collection first came out: The quirky juxtapositions, the stand-up comic lines, and the staggering emotions under the surface that are suppressed in words but not affect, all seem so no...more

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Jul 13, 2007

Kirsten rated it

Recommends it for: people who appreciate brevity

Shelves: possibles-mfa-essay, short-stories, read-in-2007, perfect-prose, xx-chromosome, tip-top

The pieces in this collection are often so short that they veer towards gestural sketches. Rarely do we know things about Hempel's characters such as name, age, and sometimes even gender beyond a reasonable guess. However, the writing is so taut that these stories hum with energy and often build to a blow-like ending, painful and revelatory. While a few lines of dialogue come across as preciously precocious, these stories dazzle with their humor as well. Particular favorites were "In th...more

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Jun 29, 2011

Jamie rated it

Recommended to Jamie by: Conley Wouters

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2011

The Great: "Tonight is a Favor to Holly"; "Nashville Gone to Ashes"; "In the Cemetery"; "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep"; "Pool Night"; "Three Popes"

The Pretty Darn Good: "When It's Human"; "Today Will Be a Quiet Day"

The Forgettable: the rest

I'm not entirely sure what this tells you about a short fiction collection comprised of fifteen stories ranging from one-page to no more than twelve...moreThe Great: "Tonight is a Favor to Holly"; "Nashville Gone to Ashes"; "In the Cemetery"; "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep"; "Pool Night"; "Three Popes"

The Pretty Darn Good: "When It's Human"; "Today Will Be a Quiet Day"

The Forgettable: the rest

I'm not entirely sure what this tells you about a short fiction collection comprised of fifteen stories ranging from one-page to no more than twelve or thirteen in length. I can say that the six stories I listed above as 'great' are almost certainly worth the price of admission, though. For me, a number are forgettable because they're simply too brief, too shadowy to leave any sort of trace at all. Others reviewing her seem to rave over her ability to make impact in the 'flash fiction' form, but I've seen more interesting micro-fiction in workshops and on livejournal communities. Her sentences, yes, are brilliant, but stringing five brilliant sentences together does not a brilliant short story make.

In the stories that shine, this haziness can be a part of the appeal; we're rarely given to know what age or gender or name a narrator has, and this can sometimes operate to make everything more intimate, closer somehow to your experience as a reader. (On the flip side, one of the major flaws for me with this collection is that every narrator may as well be the same person - you could probably read these stories as a series of vignettes in a single, really fucked up life, and experience the one-hundred pages no differently.) There are sentences that will stop you dead. Take this, for example: "A blind date is coming to pick me up, and unless my hair grows an inch by seven o'clock, I am not going to answer the door." This isn't particularly lyrical, or even particularly interesting as a concept - what it does do, however, is capture a moment in time so concisely, so perfectly that you yourself may have said it last night. Or how about this passage:

"The doctor couldn't make it to the picnics or to the skating--so he didn't show up in the pictures, either. The effect was of him saying after the flood: What I lose will always be lost. 'His problem is the past,' Grey said about his father. 'He says only do things you have done before and liked. Whereas me, what's coming is the thing I'm looking out for.' I thought the present was the safer bet. We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive."

What an astonishing insight - nothing particularly crazed or shimmering or flashy to it, but Hempel has a real talent for taking something entirely ordinary and looking at it sideways to reveal something else familiar and profound from that vantage point.

Definitely worth a look; I may end up reading the rest of The Collected Stories before the summer's out. Read this short collection in an hour or so and enjoyed nearly all of it, even if every story wasn't gut-wrenching.(less)

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Dec 17, 2010

Sabra Embury rated it

I feel like an idiot for not appreciating Amy Hempel's Reasons to Live as much as expected to. But I really thought a few of the stories in this collection were great. Especially Nashville Gone to Ashes and Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep. Hempel's writing is feminine in a way that's it's not flowery, or (extremely) passive, but of feminine things like knitting, laundry and being a wife.

I have to admit that stories with a few unpredictable twists of structure, which are of no consequence ...more

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Oct 02, 2010

Craig rated it

I love Amy Hempel. I love her spare vignettes - her slice-of-life moments in prose. I love her darkness, her slight hope. In reasons to live, she gives us just that as well as reasons not to.

Fantastic Micro-fiction -- fantastic moments in otherwise unpresented lives.

(The only thing that nearly prevented me from giving a 4 star rating was the use of the - ludicrous and wrong - phrase "mute point" in one of the stories. I would like to think it was the chara...more

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Sep 17, 2010

Chantal rated it

Death and tragedy haunt the short, short stories in Amy Hempel’s first story collection Reasons to Live (1985) like empty chairs at the table. And there is no steak, no potatoes, nor substantial courses atop Hempel’s literary table. Instead the reader is treated to tapas -- bite-size delicacies of exquisite flavors -- a literary lunch that only a truly talented minimalist (or miniaturist) writer could cook up successfully. And underneath the table: a dog or two lay near the diners’ feet,...more Death and tragedy haunt the short, short stories in Amy Hempel’s first story collection Reasons to Live (1985) like empty chairs at the table. And there is no steak, no potatoes, nor substantial courses atop Hempel’s literary table. Instead the reader is treated to tapas -- bite-size delicacies of exquisite flavors -- a literary lunch that only a truly talented minimalist (or miniaturist) writer could cook up successfully. And underneath the table: a dog or two lay near the diners’ feet, ready to catch any falling morsels. (Dogs trot through these stories in the comfortable and presumptuous way any well-loved pet wanders a home.) But, it boils down to the sentence for Hempel. Each sentence is crafted with care and precision to maximize the collective effect of denotation, connotation, rhythm and prose, -- creating art, illuminating truths and soliciting chuckles amidst the interspersed sighs and smiles her stories evoke.
Common daily occurrences make up much of Hempel’s plots. In “Tonight is a Favor to Holly,” the narrator prepares for a blind date. “Going” revolves around a patient eating a hospital meal. “When It’s Human Instead of When It’s Dog” is about a maid concerned with cleaning a carpet stain. “Today Will Be a Quiet Day” accompanies a father and his children on car ride. There are no grand adventures amongst these quiet stories. In fact, they might even be mundane if not for the potent human and emotional undercurrents that whisper at the reader from between the lines. While everyday commonalities take precedent on Hempel’s printed page, her stories work to coax and seduce profound revelations within the reader’s mind, and it is these revelations that form the real substance of Hempel’s work. It’s as if she’s softly tickling her reader’s subconscious, light fingers tapping to awaken a profound consciousness of death and tragedy and the human condition. The wonder of these powerful revelations is that the author unearths them with such subtlety, in so few words, and so few pages.
Hempel’s much acclaimed and much anthologized “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” is found amongst the stories here and for this story alone this book is worth reading. Slowly. The plot revolves around the narrator’s visit to the hospital where her friend is dying. The charm is the light banter, the comfortable relationship, the humor these friends share. The tragedy is the eminent death of the patient and the narrator’s failure as a friend, her cowardice in face of her loss, in the face of her friend’s need. The tragic sentence is “Make it useless stuff or skip it.” Another is “Baby, come hug, Baby come, fluent now in the language of grief.”
Yes, in the end it is the sentences that really shine within this work. It is the sentences that the reader will take away with her as she sets aside the book. The sentences she will repeat for others, and scrawl out in her journal. The sentences that will come back to her as she’s doing the dishes or working in the garden. The sentences she will repeat over and over in her mind for the sheer pleasure of reliving them. Sentences like this: “A blind date is coming to pick me up, and unless my hair grows an inch by seven o’clock, I am not going to answer the door.” And this: “I can’t help it. I get rational when I panic.” And this: “He wondered how we know what happens to us isn’t good.” Sentences that stand strong all alone and when gathered together form a masterpiece.
Reasons to Live is a book best read slowly, repetitively, and with serious attention -- the way one might enjoy gourmet tapas, lingering over each morsel, chewing and tasting to seek out flavors. And for the sheer pleasure of the experience.

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Sep 03, 2011

Kristel rated it

Amy Hempel's short fiction collection titled reasons to live are stories of tragedies that happen. As you might say "life happens". This collection was published in 1985, maybe she would title it "life happens" if she was picking a name today. I liked many of the stories but other readers have disliked the fact that the characters are without name and very minimal detail. I think this makes it easier to insert self. Many of the stories seem to struggle with loss or a tragedy....more

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Apr 23, 2008

Bill Kerwin rated it

A very good book of short stories. The shorter pieces are spare and elliptical--sort of like Raymond Carver, but without the power. But the better longer pieces--"Nashville Gone to Ashes," "In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried," "Today Will Be a Quiet Day" are very fine. In their classical, restrained, deeply human way they remind me of Tillie Olsen at her best--and that is high praise indeed.

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Aug 20, 2007

Jonathan rated it

Recommends it for: Connor Kilpatrick (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/)

this book does not = one of them
(okok, too easy. a bit pat. Was she not asking for it, though, with a title like this for a collection of stories? Is that not a bit presumptuous?

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Feb 16, 2011

David rated it

Shelves: short-stories

This was great. What I liked most about these stories is how you start reading them and you have no idea what is going on. You just dive in--or fall backwards--and trust that where Hempel takes you is a good place, that she will catch you before you drop to the floor. I kept having to go back as I read, to make sense of what I'd just read, I guess, but that seems so like life to me, what it would actually be like if I were suddenly to eavesdrop on the characters in these stories with all their i...more

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Jan 04, 2008

David rated it

going back. settling down. taking one moment to catch my breath. sitting beneath a weak light at a ten to midnight last night. the dogs asleep. the third of january. my childhood one thousand miles away. my mother one thousand miles away. asleep. hopefully. asleep. and a bedroom away a box of fading photographs the documents of her goodness. her smile. her love. and opening this again. with a beer on the table. it strikes me again. stage 3C. she is recovering and my father is all head in his han...moregoing back. settling down. taking one moment to catch my breath. sitting beneath a weak light at a ten to midnight last night. the dogs asleep. the third of january. my childhood one thousand miles away. my mother one thousand miles away. asleep. hopefully. asleep. and a bedroom away a box of fading photographs the documents of her goodness. her smile. her love. and opening this again. with a beer on the table. it strikes me again. stage 3C. she is recovering and my father is all head in his hands. everything is quiet but the memories and thinking are an endless marching band. all brass tubas and cymbals crashing. and everything becomes a recollection. i see her in frost on a window. i open "in a tub." have you read this? read it:

"My heart -- I thought it stopped. So I got in my car and headed for God. I passed two churches with cars parked in front. Then I stopped at the third because no one else had. It was early afternoon, the middle of the week. I chose a pew in the center of the rows. Episcopal or Methodist, it didn’t make any difference. It was as quiet as a church. I thought about the feeling of the long missed beat, and the tumble of the next ones as they rushed to fill the space. I sat there -- in the high brace of quiet and stained glass -- and I listened.

At the back of my house I can stand in the light from the sliding glass door and look out onto the deck. The deck is planted with marguerites and succulents in red clay pots. One of the pots is empty. It is shallow and broad, and filled with water like a birdbath.

My cat takes naps in the windowbox. Her gray chin is powdered with the iridescent dust from butterfly wings. If I tap on the glass, the cat will not look up. The sound that I make is not food.

When I was a girl I sneaked out at night. I pressed myself to hedges and fitted the shadows of trees. I went to a construction site near the lake. I took a concrete-mixing tub, slid it to the shore, and sat down inside it like a saucer. I would push off from the sand with one stolen oar and float, hearing nothing, for hours.

The birdbath is shaped like that tub.

I look at my nails in the harsh bathroom light. The scare will appear as a ripple at the base. It will take a couple of weeks to see.

I lock the door and run a tub of water.

Most of the time you don’t really hear it. A pulse is a thing that you feel. Even if you are somewhat quiet. Sometimes you hear it through the pillow at night. But I know that there is a place where you can hear it even better than that. Here is what you do. You ease yourself into a tub of water, you ease yourself down. You lie back and wait for the ripples to smooth away. Then you take a deep breath, and slide your head under, and listen for the playfulness of your heart."

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Jul 29, 2009

Rachel Freed rated it

Just discovered Amy Hempel. Where has she been all my life? As a kid everything was exciting, new and different; as a grown-up everthing begins to look and sound the same. Feel like a kid again discovering a writer who is life-changing. Short, succinct, minimalist, literary goddess - Hempel is exactly the writer I wish I was but never will be. Half poetry, half-memoir, half-fiction. Read her and your life will be changed forever.

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Dec 24, 2010

Rachel Drew rated it

I read In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried at some point in college or graduate school and thought it was great, but for some reason I didn't buy and finish this collection. This is the kind of book that makes me want to be a short story writer forever, no novels, no poetry, just these perfect stories. Plus, the narrators all like dogs.

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Jan 06, 2011

Matt rated it

Hempel's writing is quirky, but I don't know if that does it justice. It's somewhat fragmented and dense while also being funny and warm (the fragmented-but-warm trick seems especially hard to pull off). I don't know if one reading of these stories does them justice...glad I read the collection, and I imagine I will return to Hempel at some point.

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Dec 28, 2010

Juliette rated it

Shelves: fiction

Amy Hempel is why I want to write. She makes an art out of this botched and awkward language known as English. And even the most juvenile speaker of our language can appreciate the poetry of her style. The woman must spend hours scrutinizing every single word that she puts in a sentence. And for good reason. Her writing is simply flawless. She is a master in creating atmosphere. She paints moments in time better than a dream can.

I'll forever aspire to create images like Amy Hempel can...more

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Apr 07, 2010

Kristina rated it

I just can't get into short story collections like I can a good book. Some of these stories were weird in the way short stories are (if you read short stories a lot, you'll know what I mean) and some were actually pretty good. Not a bad read, considering it was only around 140 pages. More than that, and it would've gotten fewer stars.

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Dec 30, 2008

Jeff Williams rated it

I picked this up as a recommendation from Palahniuk. Her writing really epitomizes how much potentcy can be derived from minimalist short stories. It's hard to point at any point in the tales and say 'that's superfluous'. A great example of taking the essence of an MLA handbook and making it into an art form.

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Jun 06, 2009

Stephanie rated it

For me this averaged out to a four star rating--the collection has quite a few stories that are only a couple pages long and a couple slightly longer short stories, and I found I connected with and felt most satisfied by these longer ones, especially the excellent "In the cemetery where Al Jolson is buried."

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May 15, 2010

Andrew rated it

Shelves: short-fiction

I have a friend who attends Bennington where this author is a professor. As I've written more and more short stories my friend encouraged me to read this book.

It's excellent.

Her sentences and her ability to turn a phrase are amazing. I'll be reading more of her work, for sure.

Recommended for anyone trying to write stronger, more succinct prose!

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Mar 05, 2009

Heather rated it

More minimalist than I usually like, but clever and incisive writing. The characters are somewhat angular, if that makes sense, rather than soft. I prefer stories with deeper, more feeling-oriented characters and plots, but I can appreciate the skill and smarts of Amy Hempel's style.

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Apr 03, 2009

Tom rated it

Sometimes I don't like very short stories because they seem incomplete, or they seem like they could be better if the author hadn't shirked density/depth, or they seem like the author is using brevity to make some kind of statement when in actuality the only statement they're making is "I don't have the time to really develop this story." This book is an exception to that-- the writing is beautiful throughout, the characters fully realized within sentences and I can't imagine how long...more

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Jun 23, 2011

Lorena rated it

Shelves: short-stories

If you have never heard of Amy Hempel, pick up this book and read In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried. This was her first short story. And if this story doesn't just kill you, then you shouldn't be following my recommendations.

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Apr 11, 2009

Heather rated it

"In the cemetary where Al Jolson is buried" is my favorite story from this collection. I actually encouraged Deb to steal this from Laura's bookshelves at Samm's Birthday party. I'll have to find out how she likes it.

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Jul 21, 2009

Terre rated it

Amy Hempel is a good writer. I am torn between wanting to be as good, and disdaining anything I write which at all resembles her work. I think this is because her stories force me to face things about myself and other humans, and it's not at all pretty.
Hmmm, sounds real, doesn't it? Therein lies her gift.

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Feb 03, 2008

Anne Sanow rated it

If you only read this for "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried," just do it--one of the best short stories written, ever, and I dare you to not feel a gut wrench at the end.

But don't neglect the rest. The way Hempel pares things back can be difficult on first immersion if you're not accustomed to a particular kind of minimalism, but she's the kind of writer who can pare back and leave the juice. I'd actually choose "lush" as a way to describe the prose in ...more

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Feb 03, 2012

Brittani rated it

Recommends it for: anyone!

One of my favorite books. These stories will absolutely grab at your heart and make you realize there are actually things that can make you FEEL, and in a positive way. I absolutely love this book.

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Dec 21, 2010

Caitlin rated it

Recommended by Dr. Bondurant. Startling and original and funny and deep. This book displays high standards of craftsmanship while being entertaining and accessible-- a neat trick.

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About Amy Hempel

Amy Hempel is an American short story writer, journalist, and university professor at Brooklyn College. Hempel was a former student of Gordon Lish, who eventually helped her publish her first collection of short stories. Hempel has been published in Harper's, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Bomb. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Ambassador Book Award in 2007, the Rea Award f...more

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Quotes from Reasons to Live

“He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.” — 12 people liked it

“She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that they are intimate, the nurse and my friend.
'I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend were were in Canada'
'That's how dumb we were,' I say.
'You could be sisters,' the nurse says.
So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glorious place? But do they ask?
They do not ask.
Two months, and how long is the drive?
The best I can explain it is this - I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not eh grisliest, but it's the one that did. A man wrecked his care on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the bone - and when he looked at it - it scared him to death.
I mean, he died.
So I hadn't dared to look any closer. But now I'm doing it - and hoping that I will live through it.” — 6 people liked it

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