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4.0étoiles sur 5
An Audacious Look at How the Love We Receive and Give Shapes Our Focus and Perceptions, Oct. 10 2007
Many novelists start by imagining a character in a tricky situation and then let their sense of the character determine what happens next. That approach is exciting for readers because it draws them into the book rather quickly and compellingly. Other novelists prefer to have a structure that elicits the full development of a character or theme. The most accomplished novelists actually set out to prove a point about what it means to be human, and the plausible story is simply their way of expressing that philosophy. Those with a touch of greatness combine all of these traits, something that I think Amy Bloom has mostly accomplished with Love Invents Us.
Few readers will fail to be intrigued by the book's opening line and circumstance: "I wasn't surprised to find myself in the back of Mr. Klein's store, wearing only my underpants and panties, surrounded by sable." You want to know what that's all about, don't you? You'll have an even stronger view after you know that the narrator is Elizabeth Taube, a chubby prepubescent girl, who regularly takes rides from Mr. Klein, the local furrier, on Mondays that lead to his back room. She knows that Mr. Klein is in love with her, if that's what you want to call it.
Elizabeth will experience other forms of love as time passes: a quasi-platonic, quasi-sexual love from a teacher who is torn between the desire to be father and lover, nurturing love from an older woman who needs help, full-fledged adolescent passion with a sports hero, extending unconditional love to a former love in adulthood, seeking illicit passion by feeling head over heels in love, providing the nurturing love of a mother, and seeking the companionable love of middle age.
Ms. Bloom's point is that we are little more than self-centered creatures who seek to gratify simple needs and desires in an amoral way until we are touched by the love of someone else. It's a variation of the traditional idea that many women follow to their peril that they are nothing without love or someone to love.
To demonstrate this thesis, Ms. Bloom has to make Elizabeth someone who doesn't experience parental or familiar love . . . and who doesn't have any special features to attract other kinds of love until she becomes an object of potential sexual interest. And that's where the book develops its flaws: Ms. Bloom just doesn't bother to develop characters that aren't central to her philosophy of love creating us. Although at one level this is an understandable approach, it works as a flaw for readers until such time as the book is far enough along to see what Ms. Bloom's point is. So it comes across as bad writing, even among many fine pearls of prose.
I suspect that at some point Ms. Bloom could go back and rewrite this book to flesh it out more thoroughly . . . and create a masterpiece. I hope she does. In the meantime, Love Invents Us will charm and intrigue those who enjoy a little philosophy of life along with their peeks into the vulnerable parts of a character's psyche.
If you are offended by voyeurs who prefer children, child molestation, cruel treatment of young people, illicit sex, and amoral behavior in general, you'll be offended by this book. It's hardly going to get the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for portraying the upright life. But if you are open to seeing that we can reach mature and appropriate behavior, despite having walked on the wild side, this book will feel rewarding.
Nice literary concept, Ms. Bloom!
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4.0étoiles sur 5
An Audacious Look at How the Love We Receive and Give Shapes Our Focus and Perceptions, Oct. 10 2007
Many novelists start by imagining a character in a tricky situation and then let their sense of the character determine what happens next. That approach is exciting for readers because it draws them into the book rather quickly and compellingly. Other novelists prefer to have a structure that elicits the full development of a character or theme. The most accomplished novelists actually set out to prove a point about what it means to be human, and the plausible story is simply their way of expressing that philosophy. Those with a touch of greatness combine all of these traits, something that I think Amy Bloom has mostly accomplished with Love Invents Us.
Few readers will fail to be intrigued by the book's opening line and circumstance: "I wasn't surprised to find myself in the back of Mr. Klein's store, wearing only my underpants and panties, surrounded by sable." You want to know what that's all about, don't you? You'll have an even stronger view after you know that the narrator is Elizabeth Taube, a chubby prepubescent girl, who regularly takes rides from Mr. Klein, the local furrier, on Mondays that lead to his back room. She knows that Mr. Klein is in love with her, if that's what you want to call it.
Elizabeth will experience other forms of love as time passes: a quasi-platonic, quasi-sexual love from a teacher who is torn between the desire to be father and lover, nurturing love from an older woman who needs help, full-fledged adolescent passion with a sports hero, extending unconditional love to a former love in adulthood, seeking illicit passion by feeling head over heels in love, providing the nurturing love of a mother, and seeking the companionable love of middle age.
Ms. Bloom's point is that we are little more than self-centered creatures who seek to gratify simple needs and desires in an amoral way until we are touched by the love of someone else. It's a variation of the traditional idea that many women follow to their peril that they are nothing without love or someone to love.
To demonstrate this thesis, Ms. Bloom has to make Elizabeth someone who doesn't experience parental or familiar love . . . and who doesn't have any special features to attract other kinds of love until she becomes an object of potential sexual interest. And that's where the book develops its flaws: Ms. Bloom just doesn't bother to develop characters that aren't central to her philosophy of love creating us. Although at one level this is an understandable approach, it works as a flaw for readers until such time as the book is far enough along to see what Ms. Bloom's point is. So it comes across as bad writing, even among many fine pearls of prose.
I suspect that at some point Ms. Bloom could go back and rewrite this book to flesh it out more thoroughly . . . and create a masterpiece. I hope she does. In the meantime, Love Invents Us will charm and intrigue those who enjoy a little philosophy of life along with their peeks into the vulnerable parts of a character's psyche.
If you are offended by voyeurs who prefer children, child molestation, cruel treatment of young people, illicit sex, and amoral behavior in general, you'll be offended by this book. It's hardly going to get the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for portraying the upright life. But if you are open to seeing that we can reach mature and appropriate behavior, despite having walked on the wild side, this book will feel rewarding.
Nice literary concept, Ms. Bloom!
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4.0étoiles sur 5
Nourishment, Juil 28 2003
While reading "Love Invents Us" and about Elizabeth, I was reminded of several recent movie characters who find themselves in similar situations: Enid in "Ghost Story" and "J" in "My First Mister." Besides all three characters being about the same age, all three also have affairs of a sort with older men, all are rebels, all dress in a style best described as Goth and all three are devastatingly intelligent and colossally misunderstood ("My Mother usually acted as though I had been raised by a responsible, affectionate governess: guilt and love were as foreign to her as butter and sugar."). More importantly all have a deep capacity for love, untapped as it mostly is.
Elizabeth Taube, though she complains of not being, is well loved: by Max, a high school teacher who falls compulsively and helplessly for her: "So beautiful, Max thought. Am I supposed to be ashamed for being such a dirty old man, another Humbert, disgusting in my obsession?" By Mrs. Hill a nearly blind elderly woman whom she helps out several times a week and who "sees" Max's attraction to Elizabeth: "You put one hand on that child who thinks you love her fine mind...and I'll see you turning in Hell, listen to you pray for death." and by Huddie a young African American who once his father finds out about the affair, sends Huddie away: "(Huddie was)...a hundred times handsomer than the other handsome boys, kinder than the other sports stars. Even girls he slept with only once had nothing bad to say about him."
All of the characters in "Love Invents Us" have to deal with missed chances and miss-connections. Max's wife Greta says: "I did think it would be a happy life. That is what people think. That's why they marry and have children. In anticipation of further joy, of multiplying happiness." To which Max replies: "People like me marry and have children because we are apparently not dead, because we are grateful. Because we wish to become like the others. To experience normal despair and disappointment."
Amy Bloom's writing is voluptuous, fat and juicy as befits a novel about the many faces of Love and what we as humans are willing to do to bite off some of it for ourselves. If Love Invents Us, it also feeds us, nourishes us and substantiates our existence.
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