‘Pool Night’ by Amy Hempel

Pool Night by Amy Hempel, 1985

The magic trick:

Telling you that the incidents of the story are significant before you even know what the incidents are

This is one of those pretzel stories from Hempel.

It begins with something akin to a summary, but the sentences are so opaque we get no plot spoilers. Thus starts a push-pull dance that alternates between similarly indirect declarations of perspective and an unfolding of the narrative specifics. It creates mystery and tension. We know that these incidents must be significant. We just don’t know what these incidents are. Not yet. It keeps us reading.

That’s the mechanics behind the trick. The magic, though, is in the seamless way Hempel weaves the significance with the incidents themselves. The facts continue to chase the perspective all the way to the end of the story. And when they finally catch up, it’s a beautiful mix of metaphor and reality. And that’s quite a trick on Hempel’s part.

The selection:

This time it happened with fire. Just the way it happened before, the time it happened with water. Someone was losing everything – to water, to fire – and not trying not to.

Maybe I wasn’t losing everything. But I didn’t try to save it. That is what makes it like the first time. They had to lead me out of the house, and not because I didn’t know my way out in the smoke.

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