At The Gates Of The Animal Kingdom: Stories
Here the very talented Hempel works in a hard-bitten, often mannered mode with material made familiar in her first book, Reasons to Live . The stories in her new collection follow people through crises and emergencies, from traffic accidents to mastectomies, as they take risks, waiting "for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life" yet frequently "cut off from meaning and completion" in the end. A housewife in "Under No Moon" is mysteriously bent on seeing a comet, but in a minor comedy of errors fails to do so. The earnest and foolish young mother in "The Center" attempts to sponsor a destitute child, all the while behaving with the self-serving zeal of a super-yuppie consumer. In "The Harvest," one of the strongest stories, a narrator reconstructs, then deconstructs, the events leading up to and following a motorcycle injury that leaves a lasting psychological wound. Mordant and unsentimental, Hempel works with a sharp wit that sometimes shaves away too ruthlessly at characters, limiting the depth of her sympathy--and ours.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.