Amy Bloom is the author of Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist; A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Love Invents Us; and Normal. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Short Stories, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction, and many other anthologies here and abroad. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon, among other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. Bloom teaches creative writing at Yale University.
Praise for Away
PRAISE FOR AWAY
"AWAY is a modest name for a book as gloriously transporting as Amy
Bloom's new novel. Alive with incident and unforgettable
characters, it sparkles and illuminates as brilliantly as it
entertains... AWAY is a literary triumph, a book-club must and a
popular novel destined for wide readership. It is accessible to the
point of pure enthrallment without compromising its eloquence or
thematic strength. Yet it is also a classic page-turner, one that
delivers a relentlessly good read."
-NEW YORK TIMES
"Amy Bloom knows the urgency of love. As a practicing
psychotherapist, she must have heard that urgency in her patients'
stories, and in 1993 when she broke onto the literary scene with
Come To Me, we heard it in hers. She has never strayed from that
theme...Bloom writes with extraordinary care about people caught in
emotional and physical crosswinds: desires they can't satisfy,
illnesses they can't survive, and-always-love that exceeds the
boundaries of this world...this whole novel reads like dry wood
bursting into flame: desperate and impassioned, erotic and
moving-absolutely hypnotic."
-COVER OF WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
"With her sly sense of humor and flair for precise, elegant
language, acclaimed author Bloom fashions a spellbinding story of
courage and unwavering optimism in the face of daunting odds."
-PEOPLE
"Her execution is exquisite, and exquisite execution is rare-not
only in books but (alas) in almost any undertaking...The pleasures
of AWAY are the ordinary pleasures of extraordinary novels: finely
wrought prose, vivid characters, delectable details. There's a
soft-smile, along-the-way humor...A practicing psychotherapist,
this author combines eloquence with insight."
-COVER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK WORLD
"By the end of this memorable, panoramic novel, Bloom transforms
the musts in Lillian's life into a Scheherazade-like procession of
cans that encapsulate all the cultural richness that newcomers
contributed to this nation of immigrants in the early part of the
20th century. Grade: A"
-ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
"Far and away one of the best books of the year... Once in a great
while, a work of art-a poem, a painting, a book-will register in
the chest cavity, producing an ache of recognition and pleasure.
AWAY by Amy Bloom is such a book... a surprising, tough and
incandescent book."
-CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
"Amy Bloom is blessed with a generous heart and a brilliant
imagination, which is evident once again in her fifth and best book
so far, AWAY...The vividness and tenderness with which Bloom tells
this story is stunning. Bloom, who teaches writing at Yale
University and is also a practicing psychotherapist, has an innate
understanding of the complexity of the human heart and in Lillian,
she has created her most compelling character yet."
-HARTFORD COURANT
"So vivid and engaging, so delicious in tone, that a reader
experiences an immediate thrill, the all-too-rare one that signals:
I am in excellent hands here... The language that Bloom employs to
tell Lillian's story is immediate, colorful, and unafraid to be
plain...It's not easy to be lyrical, funny, and brilliant all at
once, and Bloom is."
-BOSTON GLOBE
"Rousing, utterly absorbing... a compact epic, an adventure story,
a survival tale and an incredible journey wrapped up in a
historical novel cloaked in a love story... exquisitely
unsentimental novel about exile, hope and love in its various
incarnations - maternal, romantic, sexual, platonic, inconvenient,
unruly, unreasonable, abiding."
-SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"A powerful new novel of loss and love, of hope and
struggle...amazing...AWAY is a short novel, but it feels packed to
the rafters with fully-realized character, with America, with all
the things that don't fit inside the vessel we've taken to calling
the American Dream...unforgettable."
-LOUISVILLE COURIER JOURNAL
"Blom executes Lillian's tale with the same fresh eye with which a
master cinematographer captures a familiar landscape...In just 248
pages of astonishing prose, Bloom covers vast emotional (and
geographic) terrain, giving a familiar story epic proportions."
-NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
"Fascinating...a tough, engaging book."
-PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
"Outstanding...A sweeping saga of endurance and rebirth.
Encompassing prison, prostitution and poetry, Yiddish humor and
Yukon settings, Bloom's tale offers linguistic twists, startling
imagery, sharp wit and a compelling vision of the past. Bloom has
created an extraordinary range of characters, settings and
emotions. Absolutely stunning."
-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW
"Summary doesn't do justice to this compact epic's richness of
episode and characterization, nor to the exemplary skill with which
Bloom increases her story's resonance through dramatic
foreshadowing of what lies ahead for her grifters and whores and
romantic visionaries and stubborn, hard-bitten adventurers. Echoes
of Ragtime, Cold Mountain and Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers,
in an amazingly dense, impressively original novel."
- KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW
"A masterly second novel...the writing is spare and tender, with
revelatory doses of irony....A novel this gorgeous doesn't need
humor, but what's better than laughing off a good cry? AWAY is a
story to sink your heart into."
-Elle Magazine
"Bloom attempts a sweeping historical epic and
succeeds...Haunting."
-More Magazine
"A novel laced with heartache, but also a strong thread of
hope."
-O Magazine
"This beautiful, effulgent book sped me forward word by word, out
of the room I was in and into Amy Bloom's world. This is a
wonderful novel, a cosmos that transcends its time period and grabs
us without compromise. Lillian's astonishing journey, driven by a
mother's love, will be with me for a long, long time."
-Ron Carlson, author of The Speed of Light
"I haven't read a novel in a long time that I genuinely wanted to
get back to, just to sit down and read for the pure joy of it.
Away is a book full of tender wisdom, brawling insight,
sharp-edged humor and-if it's possible-a lovely, wayward precision.
Amy Bloom has created an unforgettable cast of characters. Lillian,
the heroine, or anti-heroine, somehow always manages to do what
great journeys always do-continue. A marvelous book."
-Colum McCann, author of Zoli
"Raunchy, funny, and touching, Away is an elegant window into the
perils of self-invention and reinvention in New York in the 1920s.
Amy Bloom's heroine, Lillian, is an unforgettable young woman on a
quest to make her life whole and to belong in an unstable, yet
fascinating, new American world."
-Caryl Phillips, author of A Distant Shore
"Amy Bloom's work has always revolved around what love and desire
can make us do. In Away, she paints filial love on an immense
geographic and historical canvas. The result, a story of loss and
survival, is gripping."
-Christopher Tilghman, author of Roads of the
Heart
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