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Young Teacher's Chronicles Are Absolutely Engaging

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By AMY SMITH LINTON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 5, 2008

"Ms. Hempel Chronicles," by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum (Harcourt, $23)

Meet Ms. Beatrice Hempel. She's teaching seventh grade, feeling her way along.

"As she listens to the talent show, she thinks, 'If parents could understand the words, would they find the song acceptable?' Hempel was actively developing her sensitivity to the appropriate and the inappropriate. She still had difficulty distinguishing between the two: was it appropriate for her to laugh when a kid farted in class? Was it appropriate for her to wear stretchy fabrics?"

It's her second year at the school.

"She had chosen teaching because it seemed to offer both tremendous opportunities for leisure and the satisfaction of doing something generous and worthwhile. Too late she realized her mistake; teaching had invaded her like a mild but inexorable infection; her students now inhabited her dreams, her privacy, her language."

In this series of connected stories, Hempel muses about school ("when you are in school, your talents are without number, and your promise is boundless. You ace a math test: you will one day work for NASA") and about her work ("As a teacher, she felt herself the object of ferocious scrutiny; kids missed nothing; they spent entire days looking at her"), her students and then, gradually, about herself, her family, her mismatched boyfriend.

It's a graceful, utterly engaging story that combines compelling insight into the characters' hearts and minds with the kind of writing that rightfully earned Bynum critical praise.

Her first novel, "Madeline Is Sleeping," was a finalist for the National Book Award, and although "Ms. Hempel Chronicles" doesn't fit neatly into a best-selling genre (there are no multinational mystical conspiracies, no murders, no wind-swept and star-crossed loves), by rights, this should be one of the most popular novels of the year.

Amy Smith Linton of Tampa is a freelance writer.

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