Amy Hempel - "Sing to it"

Same style as previous books; short stories.

Again, really well written. But also; things become familiar now. Too familiar. "They know us as..." about the dogs in the rescue center. Have read too often about this now.

Amy Hempel - "New Stories from the South"

Emily Quinlan - "The Green Belt"

    It was hard to be a triplet! You couldn't blame anything on anybody. Always you were there, sitting right across from two copies of yourself who were doing correctly what you had just done wrong.

    He didn't know what they were communicating to each other. He used to be better at that, that knowing. These days he brought Pamela coffee when she wanted to sleep, tried to kiss her when she was dreaming of salad.


Marjorie Kemper - "Discovered America"

this story blew me away completely

    When we'd pulled up, Dr. Grueber had been working on a GM van in his driveway. He was middle-aged - I couldn't help thinking he was the right age to have worn a German uniform during World War II. He washed his hands at the sink with Borax. He dried them on a towel hanging off the kitchen stove.
    "So! Poison ivy!"
    "Right," John whispered. John's head had eaten his neck; John was the color of Paul's fire truck, he was in no condition to question his new doctor's credentials, his diagnosis, or his living arrangements.
    "Cortisone," the doctor said briskly. "Some pinephrine for good measure, I think," he added, eyeing John.
    Dr. Grueber opened the fridge and batted around in it. A family-size bottle of ketchup fell out on the floor. The doctor kicked at it, and it lodged beneath a baseboard that had never seen a scrube brush. He called to the woman in German.
    She was leaning against a counter and answered him in English. Hefound was he was looking for in the door. Where she'd said it was.

    Abortionists don't, as a rule, have green thumbs.

    I knew from the start I couldn't take a chance on having John's baby. To have it was to be stuck with John forever because that's the way I am. And by then I believed that a woman had a right to a life not patched together from mistakes she'd made when she was too young or too dumb to know any better - like marrying a Yankee who talked too loud and didn't like her mother; a man who got midnight hang-up-calls and wanted it every night. (I never bothered hunting for her underwear.)

    The bathroom was tiny. You couldn't have swung a cat.

    With your automatics, I found driving a car is not that big of a deal. D is for drive. That's pretty much it. I had no need of reverse. The worst part is you can't close your eyes crossing bridges. I drove to Dallas.

    But we'd none of us listened, and now it was too late. Death was on television like a beauty pageant; it was in my grandfather's familiar cigarette cough; it was enthroned trumphant in my empty womb; it was depicted on the front page of every newspaper, morning and afternoon, which each new day hit the porch with sickening thuds.


Elizabeth Spencer - "Return Trip"

    Patricia got up from the porch and walked in th dark down to the New River. She kicked off her shoes, sat on the boat pier and put her feet in the cool, silky water. It was then she heard the Mississippi voices for the first time. She knew each one for who it was, though they had died years ago or hand't been seen for ages. Sometimes they mentioned Edward and sometimes herself. They talked on and on about unimportant things and she knew them all, each one. She sat and listened, and let the water curl round her feet.


Tim Gautreaux - "IDOLS"
 
    "Take you back?" Julian gave him a startled look. "Didn't you tell me that woman beat you with a broom?"
   Obie looked down at his plate and smiled a faraway smile. "Aw, she's just a woman. Can't hurt a man unless she buys a gun."

Amy Hempel - "Weekend"

A mere 1,5 pages, of which I'll cut and paste the last quarter, and this is as beautiful as it gets...

    The women smoked on the porch, the smoke repelling mosquitoes, and the men and children played on even after dusk when it got so dark that a candle was rigged to balance on top of the post, and was knocked off and blown out by every single almost-ringer.

    Then the children went to bed, or at least went upstairs, and the men joined the women for a cigarette on the porch, absently picking ticks engorged like grapes off the sleeping dogs. And when the men kissed the women good night, and their weekend whiskers scratched the women's cheeks, the women did not think shave, they thought: stay.

Amy Hempel - "A Full-Service Shelter" (in Tin Magazine)

Not sure I read it before, but a good read showing how a very simple structure ("They know us...", "they know me...") can be used and developed without becoming boring.

Plus, of course, Amy Hempel's insanely good writing.

Read in the Tin Magazine.

Amy Hempel - "reasons to live"

Beautiful short stories, in which seldom eveything is made clear. Yet no pretence is made about what it means. There is a meaning. There is a thought. And it is yours.

If I am not mistaken, she belongs to a school of writes who abhor the (over)usage of adjectives, and their usage is minimal.

Stories to read over and over again.