10.28.07 Virtual Book Club: Amy Bloom!
Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.
About the Author: Amy Bloom is the author of the acclaimed story collection Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; a novel, Love Invents Us, and a nonfiction work, Normal. Bloom teaches creative writing at Yale University, where she is a fellow of Calhoun College.
Click here to visit Amy Bloom’s website.
This beautiful, effulgent book sped me forward word by word, out of the room I was in and into Amy Bloom’s world. This is a wonderful novel, a cosmos that transcends its time period and grabs us without compromise. Lillian’s astonishing journey, driven by a mother’s love, will be with me for a long, long time.
–Ron Carlson, author of The Speed of Light
1. The first book I read of Amy Bloom’s was, Love Invents Us, then Come To Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. I was initially drawn to you because of the imaginative title and the first thing I noticed when I saw Away, was the one word title. Then I began reading and noticed the chapter titles such as, “If I had Chains I would Pull You To Me.” How do you choose your titles? Where does the inspiration come from, what does Away mean to you?
2. We spend a short amount of time with all the different characters in Lillian’s life from Reuben to Gumdrop to Chinky and finally John Bishop. Yet you create such complex, deeply felt personalities I wonder how much research goes into each characters? What is your process, how do you make these people real in such a brief amount of time?
3. Why did you end Lillian’s journey with John Bishop? I wanted her to keep going, why didn’t you want her to make the crossing to Siberia? Did Lillian fail, did she give up, or did she simply change what she was looking for?
1) Why did you choose to have the narrator tell Lillian’s story, which happens over eighty years ago, in present tense, as opposed to past?
2) What problems or issues did you face while writing Away? Did the story sort of unfold organically as Lillian’s journey unfolded, or did it evolve in some other manner?
3) How much historical research was involved in the writing of this book?
Hello…I am looking forward to the book club! Thank you to Felicia and Amy for the chance to discuss this fascinating novel. I have a few questions I hope to ask this evening in the conversation:
1) In this novel, Lillian is a heroine who defies traditional gender stereotypes. In literary studies, much has been made of female protagonist’s stories as following a circumscribed inner/emotional territory due to the restrictions of family and the home. Lillian, however, sets forth from Russia to NYC, to the West and the Telegraph Trail to Siberia, a female completely set loose in the “external landscape” of men. Did you consciously decide to craft a character who would defy the norms? Would you consider Lillian to be a feminist character specifically or simply a survivor in more general terms?
2) Throughout the novel, the roving point-of-view allows readers to wander through time and place with the characters, revealing unusual insights into their futures. We know of what befalls Reuben and Meyer after Lillian leaves the city, how Gumdrop’s later life takes its shape, where Chinky ends up after prison, and even with Lillian and John. This fascinated me–how fluid the perspective was. Did you ever consider writing this novel in the first person? Why or why not? Could it have worked as well?
3) References to classical mythology are woven throughout this book, particularly concerning the story of Proserpine lost in the underworld and her mother, Ceres, seeking desperately to find her with mixed success. In fact, in Away, when John asks Lillian, “What’s your story?” it is this tale she immediately thinks of. Is Lillian a mythic character to you? How important were these classical stories in the process of telling of Lillian’s life and experiences?
Thank you, once again, for considering these questions!
Best wishes,
Delia
[…] Revealed fans will recall that we had technical snafus and couldn’t get the Virtual Book Club running. Amy has since been gracious enough to field questions from her readers after the jump. Amy […]
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