About book A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (2001)
Amy Bloom. I have never read anything of hers before. I mean, I worked at a bookstore at the height of her Away's popularity, but I never did much more than crack the cover and read the book jacket. So why I chose this collection (A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You) of her short stories to start with, I'm not entirely sure. The first story is about a mother's love extending to her daughter as the girl becomes her son. I had just finished this when someone (at a gathering of J's family) asked me what I was reading and if I liked it. I wasn't sure what to say to a woman whose favorite books include all of Dan Brown's novels. I said I wasn't sure.I kept reading. The dark family secret that divides a family and drives a stepson and his stepmother to quietly struggle through quiet family moments. The mistress unsure what to do with her dying lover's family. The mourning mother struggling to love the most unloveable child she can find. Such twisted, unhealthy, subnormal love, written with such beautiful sentences. I didn't know whether I loved or hated it I felt so disturbed. (Can no one with within healthy boundaries?)But.The last story. Not really a story so much as the deconstruction of a story. The deconstruction of a story into bits and pieces so believable I just looked Amy Bloom up online to see if that was actually her story. That story was worth the whole book. Let me see if I can explain.The very first image Bloom gives us in Story is that of the declining house market. She describes how the homeowners for sale signs become more and more desperate, more blunt, and then she says "I have thought that I could buy that house." The narrator is talking about the house that no one wants, whose owners are desperate to have off their hands...and then she tells us a pretty story about how she would live in that house no one wanted. Then we are told a story about a neighbor couple and their daughter, which she revises, taking out all the pretty details, and then revises further, adding grotesque features to both their marriage and her place in its demise. When the story finishes, we find "Amy" the narrator who is but isn't Bloom herself, living in that house [marriage:] that she perceived as unwanted, even though she had to reduce it to its most desperate to make room for herself in it.It's a terrible image. An awful, uncomfortable story. But SO beautifully written, with lines like this:There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.I don't know. I both wanted to give this book five stars and one star. I think I'll go read something happy now.
I can't quite articulate how much I loved these stories, how much I admired the level of craft on display here. Characterizations are sharp, and descriptions are precise and concise. It is amazing. Consider this excerpt:The summer Jessie Spencer turned five, she played Capture the Flag every day with the big boys, the almost-six-year-olds who'd gone to kindergarten a year late. Jane never worried, even in passing, about Jesse's IQ or her eye-hand coordination or her social skills. Jesse and Jane were a mutual admiration society of two smart, strong, blue-eyed women, one five and one thirty-five, both good skaters and good singers and good storytellers. Jane didn't mention all this to the other mothers at play group, who would have said it was the same between them and their daughters when Jane could see it was not, and she didn't mention it to her own sweet, anxious mother, who would have taken it, understandably, as a reproach. Jane didn't even mention this closeness to the pediatrician, keeper of every mother's secret fears and wishes, but it sang her to sleep at night. Jane's reputation as the play group's good listener was undeserved; the mothers talked about their knock-kneed girls and backward boys and Jane smiled and her eyes followed Jesse. She watched her and thought, That smile! Those lashes! How brave! How determined!That single paragraph (the second paragraph in the first story) made me sit up and take notice.
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This collection was a finalist for the national book critics circle award and the back jacket was full of lines of praise from the New Yorker and the New York Times, but I didn't connect with the stories. I felt like they were written with a lot of polish and there was a lot of cleverness in the stories, but it all felt pretty glib to me and I wasn't able to connect with any of the characters emotionally. They seemed empty to me, shiny but without substance. I don't know. I guess lots of other people liked the collection but it wasn't for me.....
—Jenny
Someone highly recommended me this book for its beautiful writing and short stories. I will say that the writing is quite nice and unique in some ways, but all these short stories were such downers. They all encompassed someone on terminal illness or dead in some way, and after reading a book about a husband dying of cancer, I really needed a break from the death/sickness genre. These stories also carry some weird and in some cases, incestuous plots that didn't make it any more interesting. Needless to say that all these short stories left without any conclusive sentiment, which easily had me clueless to have a feeling around these stories. The best story for me was the last one called "The Story" - which was a good way to end the book because I literally felt I couldn't take it anymore. All that said, I am quite intrigued about the person who recommended me this book, because I do believe you need a certain taste to really love these short stories. I didn't hate these stories, but they were a little out of my comfort zone.
—Katherine
Eh. I used to read a regular column of Amy Bloom's somewhere. This was apparently soooo long ago that when I just tried to research it, none of her biographies that I hit upon online contained this tidbit of information. I can't remember where it was but enjoyed it so much that I remember thinking that when she published her first book, I would jump right on it and be a lifelong fan. Well, apparently I waited too long. I've been wanting to read this one for a number of years but when it finally came down to it, it just couldn't retain my interest. The first story, about a woman accepting her daughter/son's transexuality, was sweet but kinda boring...and the second story... well, I didn't get through the second story and I decided to stop there. Don't get me wrong - it's not bad writing - it's just not for me. At least not right now. I'm finding that when I now pick up a writer I liked in my youth, they just no longer hold the same appeal. Anyway. Not worth sticking with for me...
—wanderaven
