GOING Amy Hempel.

To me, being a writer is the ability to tell a good story in a few words. Amy Hempel fits into my box of a good writer.She is able to divert my thoughts in many different ways.The way she starts the story gets the reader involved immediately.My mind started working ,trying to picture whatever she was saying.She starts by talking about the hospital menu. She makes us realize there is a mistake with the spelling of "served" on her breakfast tray. It was rather spelled as "severed".She now connects this to her accident by saying a menu that says pot roast "severed" with buttered noodles is not what someone who flipped his car twice at sixty and landed side-up in a ditch would like to see.This smooth connection reveals her mastery of writing skills- being able to pass across a message without using a lot of words. She keeps doing this through out the story.She also links the nurse's question to her school teacher who talks about Realization.Just when you think she is going to narrate a particular event with details, she takes your mind off it,and starts talking about some other thing seemingly related to her previous topic. This makes her writing interesting and captivating because you leaves you wondering what she would say next.
Her "olfactory hallucinations" is one thing i found very hilarious, as she says she was able to smell the smoke of her parents' house burning three states away.I begin to wonder how this is possible,but then this adds to the 'flavor' of the story. In essence, this story is about her car accident and the memory loss. But the style she uses to say this is what makes it ideal.
Love the story.