Love Invents Us
by Amy Bloom
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Book Summary Information
Author: Amy BloomEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-01-27
ISBN: 0375750223
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Love Invents Us
Book Review: Ordinary people rendered extraordinary in poetic prose
Summary: 4 Stars
Ordinary people--the kind we meet in the deli and barely notice--are rendered extrardinary through Amy Bloom's knowing eyes. So many stark truths about life's realities are spoken so matter-of- factly that one could miss them if one were not paying attention. And in the lives of Elizabeth, Huddie and Max, so separate yet so closely interleaved--like contiguous layers of onionskin at opposing poles--we see patterns that repeat themselves in childhood, at puberty, in middle age--ways of being that took root before we knew what we were doing. "Elizabeth knew that the bad things that had happened to her were no worse than other people's bad things; they were pretty small potatoes, in fact, compared to terminal cancer, death by famine, incest, quadriplegic paralysis." p.132 Amy Bloom's lyrical writing is like a benediction on what, in less skillful hands, would be tawdry lives. Love not only invents Elizabeth Taube; it is the driving force of her existence and the exclusive theme of the novel. So here is a syllogism for you: If love invents us, we exist through love; if existence is good, then love is good. Ah, but is it? Here, surely, is love gone awry. Here is a young girl irretrievably damaged by the illicit desires of older men who should have known better. Old Mr. Klein's furs turn the lost child Elizabeth into a beautiful princess, but the damage is done, the acceptance of the unacceptable is learned before puberty. Ignored by her parents and deprived of wholesome love, Elizabeth inevitably takes love where it is offered. Who among us could not accept love that is freely given; nevermind, the consequences. The pattern is set and pursues Elizabeth as theme and variations through middle age. Bloom's toneless style, that infuses the scenes with the love she writes about, renders Elizabeth's various loves as beautiful things, to be savored and thought over. Who among us has not had a crush on a high school English teacher? From Bloom's imagination unfolds the probable outcome of a teenage crush acted out to its less-than-ideal conclusion. Here, in the sweetest language and imagery possible, so sweet we almost don't recognize it for the horror that it is, is a story of a woman, from childhood to middle age, who's damaged life seems almost enviable it is presented to us so beautifully and so lovingly. Despite the underside-of-life quality of the relationships, Elizabeth is like a mirror. I see myself in her deepest feelings, the temptations life has offered, the damaging random events that set us irretrievably down certain paths. Perhaps Elizabeth never aspired to more than the fundamentals: life, love, motherhood--and then we die. She starts out alone and in the end she is still alone. For her, not only is love universal, it is also eternal. These ordinary lives take on almost epic proportion through exquisite portraiture. Bloom's lyric brush strokes fill us with nostalgia for Elizabeth's lost potential. But perhaps nothing was lost after all, because she learned the message some say we are here to learn: Let us all love one another. Let us speak together of love, but not romance. Romance died at Furs by Klein. No one lives happily ever after, yet here they fail to do so in the most eloquently poetic manner. What a pitty to lose romance before puberty. When I was ten, the same age as Elizabeth Taube, I fell and cut my knee open--a great gaping gash that stretched so badly as it healed it looked like my knee had a mouth. The first thing I thought of when I saw the wound was that now I could not grow up to be Miss America. I actually mourned this loss for many years. But this was as nothing compared to what Elizabeth lost at the same age. Adventures of the heart, especially those with forbidden overtones, consume us and drag us along with their powerful pull--passion, desire, compulsion to know what will be. Elizabeth's affaires de coeur are our own fantasies played out to their illogical conclusion. One might be tempted to use the word "perverse" in describing her obsessions, but we know too many of us have had brushes with the likes of Mr. Klein, or have had crushes on teachers like Max Stone, or have had boyfriends of whom no one approved, or have loved and been unmercifully used by a manipulative adult. Intimations of such near things are evoked, conjured up and as these dramas play themselves out in Elizabeth's life, we see the mirror reflect back at us and we feel the common bond of her humanity. Love, indeed, does invent us.
Summary of Love Invents Us
National Book Award finalist Amy Bloom has written a tale of growing up that is sharp and funny, rueful and uncompromisingly real. A chubby girl with smudged pink harlequin glasses and a habit of stealing Heath Bars from the local five-and-dime, Elizabeth Taube is the only child of parents whose indifference to her is the one sure thing in her life. When her search for love and attention leads her into the arms of her junior-high-school English teacher, things begin to get complicated.And even her friend Mrs. Hill, a nearly blind, elderly black woman, can't protect her when real love--exhilarating, passionate, heartbreaking--enters her life in the gorgeous shape of Huddie Lester.
With her finely honed style and her unflinching sensibility, Bloom shows us how profoundly the forces of love and desire can shape a life.
In this first novel, Amy Bloom spins the tale of one Elizabeth Taube, charting her progress from an unloved adolescent to (alas) an unloved, middle-aged mother. To be sure, Elizabeth has had no shortage of suitors. Yet, one by one, they desert her, leaving nothing but their imprints upon her personality--which, if we are to take the title literally, is almost all the personality we have. The author steers clear of sentimentalizing her heroine's plight. And Bloom's eerie ability to convey physical sensation--which also distinguished her story collection Come to Me--is on ample and impressive display.
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