Reviews for Ms. Hempel Chronicles

The average rating for Ms. Hempel Chronicles based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-01-02 00:00:00 Jonathan Storts EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: "SHARP GRACEFUL PROSE" + "LUSH POETIC IMAGERY" = "AIMLESS NAVEL-GAZING MESS". Is it some kind of chick-lit thing? I mean, this book shows up on various "best of" lists for last year, so I figured it must be worthwhile. Right? Maybe if you teach 7th graders. Actually, it's condescending to 7th grade teachers to imply that they should be satisfied with this book. It's an amorphous mess. I suppose the jacket blurb should have warned me - by now I should have know the code. When reviewers focus almost exclusively on the "sharp, graceful prose" and "lush, poetic imagery", it's a sure sign that other essentials, such as plot and character development, are probably not up to par. You know, the kind of writing that appeals to the writers' workshop crowd and nobody else. This is that kind of book. Bynum sidesteps that irritating plot requirement by structuring the book as eight linked "chronicles", each centered around the eponymous Ms. Hempel, whom we're obviously supposed to find charming as all get out. Well, call me a curmudgeon, but self-absorbed, aimless, needy characters navigating their twenties and thirties no longer do it for me. The meandering structure didn't help - in the first two chronicles, Beatrice is in her twenties; then we get two chronicles which are primarily flashbacks to her childhood, then back to the 'adult' Beatrice, but there's no particular payoff. It's not a horrible book. No puppies are killed or maimed. There are no obvious linguistic atrocities. You sense that the author has talent. And maybe that's why I found the book so irritating, because - talent notwithstanding - the whole exercise just seemed completely pointless, and more than a little self-indulgent on the author's part. I finished it only because of my pathological Catholic guilt.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-05-24 00:00:00 Robert Gordon There's a lot to find charming about Ms Hempel Chronicles, a fictional memoir of a seventh-grade teacher. Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum has a talent for capturing the quirks of humanity, and all of her characters are lovingly drawn. Her descriptions of middle school life feel joyously, heartbreakingly true. And, two or three times, the narrative builds to a moment of lovely poignancy. As a novel, however, it never quite comes together. It feels like a character study -- and not a particularly satisfying one at that. Shun-Lien Bynum seems more interested in delving at length into protagonist Beatrice's past, rather than taking the character forward. Moments of forward trajectory are unleashed in a flurry, rather than examined for meaning. I was not surprised to find a note at the end thanking the publications that had accepted excerpts of the novel as short stories. This is, in truth, a book of short stories bundled together hastily under the guise of a novel. Disappointing.