MADreads

Twenty-something Beatrice Hempel is just beginning to feel like ”Ms. Hempel”, but that isn’t who she is all the time - it’s who she is to her seventh-grade English class.  Throughout the eight connected stories in Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s Ms. Hempel Chronicles, we see Beatrice as her Ms. Hempel self with her students and co-workers, but also as Beatrice in her angsty teenage years, in the present with her friends and fiance, and as a more mature woman in the future.  Each story could stand by itself as a lovely glimpse into this woman’s life, but together, they organically paint a vivid portrait of a fully-realized woman and the way her career and her personal life interact.  Some of the most significant details about Ms. Hempel are revealed in passing, while the stories focus on smaller, mundane events like a school talent show and a chance encounter with a former student in the park.  I felt like I got to know Ms. Hempel a little better with every page, and the more I knew, the more I liked her.   

 

This is only Bynum’s second book, but she already is proving herself a masterful storyteller.  Her debut novel, Madeleine is Sleeping, was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, and Ms. Hempel is already collecting accollades from reviewers.  If you missed her talk at the Wisconsin Book Festival, you can find out about it here.