"BLOOM"-ING BOOKS

Now that I have completed all of the fiction that Amy Bloom has written, I am looking forward to what she will be writing in the future. She is a past National Book Award finalist for her earlier short story collection, Come to Me, which I beleive we've visited on this blog before.

I recently read Bloom's first novel, Love Invents Us, which chronicles Elizabeth Taube's, rather disturbing journey into adolescence, then adulthood, introducing along the way a collection of vividly drawn characters, who are each a vital part of this neurotic, but perceptive young girl's life. While not a heartwarming novel, it is captivating. Bloom's Elizabeth, lonely and neglected, is an intriguing heroine whose burgeoning self-discovery and identity questions is sympathetic and real . Bloom, who teaches creative writing at Yale, is a former pyschotherapist; readers will wonder how if many of Bloom's clientele appear in this work, as well as her two short story collections and her new novel, Away.