Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [0]
LOVE INVENTS US
“This writer gets more meaning into individual sentences than most authors manage in whole books. They are the kind of sentences you reread for sheer pleasure, and to feel a closeness to the characters which is like an embrace.”
—The New Yorker
“Tart and shrewdly observed.… We move from one beautifully rendered epiphany to another.”
—Newsday
“Part of the pleasure of this novel is Bloom’s refusal to treat her characters as types, her empathy for the very particular nature of individual lives.… Even the minor players in this novel … have bite, solidity, complexity.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Love Invents Us envelops the reader in a magical dream—by turns funny, joyous, triumphant, bittersweet, sensuous and passionate.… Amy Bloom writes like an angel.”
—Thom Jones, author of The Pugilist at Rest
“Amy Bloom’s subject is love, and she writes about it with the appreciation a gourmet takes to the table, the sensitivity a painter brings to the canvas.… Bloom’s characters are bent, broken, and redeemed by love.”
—Harper’s Bazaar
“The highest compliment I can pay a writer is to say that her work is Chekhovian—which is to say that its fine, fierce intelligence is matched by its compassion.… This is a rare book.”
—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After
“Bloom curves, spins and carves around her subject, expanding into exquisite scenes.”
—Elle
“Amy Bloom writes about love in prose as pure and polished as river-washed stone. And such is her wisdom that, in reading about a woman who has done nothing I ever did, I felt I was reading about myself.”
—Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives
“A witty and acutely sensitive view of a modern woman’s search for love.… In razor-sharp prose Bloom follows her heroine’s delightfully awkward efforts to make the most of love in a life that is far from perfect. Bloom approaches sex with all the fervor of Whitman singing the body electric.”
—Baltimore Sun
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, JANUARY 1998
Copyright © 1997 by Amy Bloom
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1996.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Portions of Chapter 1 of this book originally appeared as a short story entitled “Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines” from a collection of stories entitled Come to Me, by Amy Bloom. Copyright © 1993 by Amy Bloom. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bloom, Amy, 1953–
Love invents us / Amy Bloom.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77359-3
I. Title.
PS3552.L6378L68 1998
813′.54—dc21
97-21966
Author photograph © Matthew Hranek
Random House Web address: www.randomhouse.com
v3.1
For Alexander, Caitlin, and Sarah
… there are many ways to be born and They all come forth, in their own grace.
—Muriel Rukeyser
… the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with Augustine, “I want you to be,” without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation.
—Hannah Arendt
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
Just as I Am
Take My Hand
A Balm in Gilead
Peace Like a River
Scandalize My Name
Fare Thee Well
Speak to My Heart
Hear Me
Part Two
Save Love, Catch Light
Only Believe
I Sing Because I’m Happy, I Sing Because I’m Free
The Night Is Dark
I Surrender All
What Else Can I Do?
Oh, Do Not Let the World Depart
Can’t Turn You Loose
Beneath Wings of Love Abide
Part Three
The Greatest of These Is Love
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide: Love Invents Us
About the Author
Other Books