Has anybody read Amy Bloom’s new book? I know that Away was and still is widely read. Today I was reading The New York Times Book Review and I am still curious to read Where the God of Love Hangs Out.
They travel to St. Kitts for winter breaks and to Florence for their 20th wedding anniversaries. They play CDs of Joan Sutherland in their car radios. When crises arise they take to bourbon in the midafternoon and snack on olive tapenade. Rome’s air pollution is a likely subject of conversation over their dinners, which might feature gnocchi in basil cream sauce and radicchio and orange salad, washed down with a St.-Amour Beaujolais. They read The Economist and go to psychiatrists who subscribe to Paris-Match. Readily dropping foreign phrases, they flatter a woman by saying that she looks like a Balthus or that she has a lot of chien.”
Which is to say that most of the characters in Amy Bloom’s fictions are exceedingly cosmopolitan and worldly-wise. In her latest, erotically charged, highly explicit collection of short stories, “Where the God of Love Hangs Out,” they also think and speak in a cheeky if not impudent manner. “You come to my house and I’ll shoot you myself,” a daughter says to her difficult mother. An aging man, recalling the loves of his early youth, describes one as “a big, bushy-haired girl with thighs like Smithfield hams,” another as “an Egyptian ballerina whose kohl ran onto his linen sport coat.” “Your prostate alone’s enough to scare her off,” a fellow advises a friend whose marriage has grown precarious. “You gotta get a guest room just to keep it somewhere.”
This upbeat sassiness of tone is one of the many treasures of Bloom’s new collection, which differs markedly from her previous ones (“Come to Me,” “A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You”). It includes two sets of linked narratives, each consisting of four stories, as well as several free-standing stories . . .
. . . Bloom, who is also a psychotherapist, vividly chronicles the inner lives of people caught in emotional and physical constraints — illnesses they are striving to survive, regrets they are trying to allay, desires they often dare not fulfill. She writes in beautifully wrought prose, with spunky humor and a flair for delectably eccentric details. Her narrative talents include a fine touch with flashbacks, which she handles as suavely as any writer I can think of. Her gift for dialogue is equally terrific. Here is Lionel instructing 15-year-old Buster about the facts of life:
“You want to be the kind of man women beg for sex. . . . Don’t slobber. You’re not a washcloth. You. Are. A. Lover.”
Brava, Ms. Bloom. Send us an equally sly, dashing book very soon, please.
Click here for the full review written by Francine du Plessix Gray, February 7, 2010.
Illustration of Amy Bloom by Tina Berning.
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