Come to Me: Stories
by Amy Bloom
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Book Summary Information
Author: Amy BloomEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1994-04-13
ISBN: 0060995149
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Come to Me: Stories
Book Review: A world in each story
Summary: 5 Stars
Having read her other books, Love Invents Us, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, I think "Come To Me," is Amy Bloom's finest by far.
Each story broaches delicate issues of life and death, love and loss, and definition of family with humor and humility. Nothing is taken for granted, including the way she carefully chooses each word, each turn in the story.
Enter the beginning story with Ellen at her mother's funeral in "Love is Not a Pie." Watch as Henry and Marie contemplate monogamy and negotiate the confines of their relationship in "Faultlines" and "Only You." Follow Violet as she watches her sister fall apart in "Silver Water."
The endings of Amy Bloom's stories are surprising not because of shocking leaps in logic or tumultuous events, but because the world in each story unfolds so gently, envelopingly, and it is a jolt when each closes up again, leaving you with the imprint of a world gone as quickly as it unfolded.
Summary of Come to Me: Stories
Nominated for a National Book Award, this fresh and stunning collection of stories takes the reader deep into the heart of the most alarming and joyful human relationships.Amy Bloom's 1993 collection, Come to Me, is filled with yearning mysteries of romantic and familial love that are far more complex than the phrase "love story" allows. The first sentence of the first story, "Love Is Not a Pie," evinces the contradictions, layers, and interconnections of her narrator's existence--and hooks the reader entirely. "In the middle of the eulogy at my mother's boring and heart-breaking funeral, I began to think about calling off the wedding." The title phrase means exactly what it says: Lila's mother didn't have a finite amount of affection and was lucky not to be forced to choose between love's accepted forms and a more unusual one: "People think that it can't be that way, but it can. You just have to find the right people." Lila realizes that she needs to get out of her engagement because she isn't ready for normality.
The unusual pervades these stories, and Bloom handles some outsized events with delicacy and humor. In "Sleepwalking," a new widow sends her stepson away after they've slept together, because she wants him to have a normal life. The author makes us aware that there's something terrible and foolhardy about this woman's decision. Several other characters find themselves in equally desperate situations, their only consolation being recollections of earlier bliss, often sensual: "It was like nothing else in my life, that river of love that I could dip into and leave and return to once more and find it still flowing." For them, memories of past happiness makes present sorrow bearable.
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