Well this is just a charming little book.
Ms. Hempel is a twenty-something schoolteacher who lives a pretty normal, almost mundane, life. She attends the school talent show. She muses on the odd relationship between student and teacher, and sometimes teacher and teacher. She gets engaged. She breaks up. She takes kids on field trips. She wants to be the young cool teacher but she also feels that she ought to learn how to be a disciplinarian. The book is a novel, sort of, in the form of a series of shortish stories about Ms Hempel’s life. It’s not a narrative. The plot is not straightfoward. And that didn’t bug me at all, because Ms. Hempel was very easy to get along with.
I think what really charmed me was how Bynum highlights the moments of profundity in the everyday. She treats her characters with gentleness and love and gives them moments of insight that really endear you to them. I found it a very positive book–uplifting in the way that you sometimes feel when you have a moment of clarity in the everyday, when you’re struck by how marvelous or interesting or bizarre something perfectly ordinary is.
The structure reminded me of Olive Kitteridge–lots of short vignettes tied together to make a kind of novel–but this one was much lighter. I liked them both, but they each have different moods. Olive is a harder character–hard on herself, hard on others, and her vignettes were sometimes very difficult to read. Ms Hempel, on the other hand, is breezier, though no less interesting, and we get more of a glimpse into her internal life. The subjects in her vignettes are, frankly, easier to deal with: a teacher’s attachment to her students, a daughter’s love for her mother, a persistent doubt that your chosen career is the right one.
This was a book I looked forward to reading before bed–just light enough to end the day on an uplifting note, but deep enough to give you something to think about.