Reasons to Live

Amy Hempel. Penguin Books, $7.95 (144pp) ISBN 978-0-14-008666-9

Two themes run through the 15 stories collected here: an intense regret at life's missed connections and a sharp, wittily observed sense of what it takes to survive. PW praised Hempel's ""many gifts, including her deliciously absurd sense of the trivia we all carry around with us and her comic obsession with animals.'' (May)

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