Customer Reviews

Away

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

I loved the beginning of this book. I loved its faint Yiddish inflections, the bravery of its main character, the world Amy Bloom places her in, the sadness driving her. But then my heart started to sink as I realized she was going to keep Lillian going, on a Homeric journey, meeting one character after another like an odyssey, never staying in one place very long, rushing too quickly forward, and giving each new character an aria about their lost love. While reading the first 50 pages, I wrote emails to friends and family telling everyone to rush to buy this...then wrote back to say never mind. Then she won me back in the last 40 pages or so. There were things I really admired in the writing and things that didn't work at all -- I'm surprised an editor didn't give Bloom better advice, particularly about the sexual element that so oddly (and off-puttingly, often) appears in every experience, and also about the way she runs off with characters instead of sticking to the point. Every character is different, but each has such similar stories to tell that I found them uninteresting (and unreal) very quickly. It's hard to tell, too, if Bloom, meant to leave the inflection behind once Lillian leaves New York, or if the writer simply lost her way. It seemed like a glaring mistake to me (if Lillian has learned the English language on her travels, if that were made clear, maybe the loss of the inflected narration would have made more sense). Still, I found chunks of this to be a page-turner and moving. But to link these adventures together into a novel doesn't hide the fact that Bloom really is a short story writer. All in all, this doesn't satisfy as a novel, though I have high regard for a lot in it.

Rather than review, I'm going to make my observations:

1. The book transported me into the life and brain of a 22 year old Russian girl who had to flee Russia to America in the 1920s. She has lived through the slaughter of her family and arrives in NYC without anything but the dress she's wearing. The author does a great job of putting you into the girl's shoes and you feel numb, desperate, your survival instincts kick in and you become ready to do what it takes to survive. Some of these things aren't what you learned to do in church, and yet they must be done.

2. The book is full of fringe characters who live and barely survive in the time. She works as a seamstress, lives with cousins, sleeps on a couch, the floor, out in the wilderness, on a cot in jail, etc., over half the book. She meets prostitutes, men running away from the law, robbers, becomes friends with a gay man, spends time in a woman's correctional facility, etc. Overall, I felt that all of these characters seemed real for the time and you really are experiencing the world of the 1920s both in NYC and Alaska.

3. There were very frank and straight forward sexual experiences along the way. The feeling that it creates is that sex was almost less complicated and straight forward then than it is now. But we're a young, inexperienced girl from Russia who is desperate, has been married and likes men. So she is very submissive and doesn't worry too much about it when approached by men she likes. I've read that these scenes were a negative by some of the other reviewers. I would say that if you can handle an R rated movie, you can handle this and that for me, it added a human dimension that made you love and understand the main character, Lillian, very well. You have extreme sympathy for her and just shake your head at what she goes through and yet still moves positively ahead.

4. From time to time the author moves us away from our main character to tell the rest of the story of the life of one of the other main characters. It is a very satisfying, dot the i's, cross the t's experience. Each sub story finishes up within a few pages and yet we have this very fun synopsis of their life that makes us smile and doesn't leave us hanging like happens very often in this kind of book. Whatever happened to old so and so?

5. Many books have an obvious ending that we're planning on experiencing as we're moving forward. Although you will formulate a similar plan here, you will find that your plan won't be realized. And yet the ending is very satisfying as we zoom away from the main character and we have closure by the end of the book, even though the main goal of the main character is never satisfied. We're left with the feeling that life is really a series of coincidences that happen along the way and that your life, as much as you want to plan it out, is really more your ability to handle things as they happen, make adjustments and then be happy with what is given to you. Humans are resilient and capable of going through a lot of extreme situations and can still survive and even thrive.

6. Lillian has trudged on foot, boat, ship, train from NYC all the way through Alaska and up to Siberia to find her little lost daughter who may be still alive or more likely dead. But human instinct, that she-bear instinct, makes us do amazing and perhaps, stupid things. And yet the book is touching, wonderful and real. You have to wonder if some of the things she goes through could have really happened, and yet, you realize, deep down, that they did happen, as horrible as they seem from our protected, pampered perspective.

If you're a little squeamish about reality, sex, etc., perhaps you shouldn't read this book. But you'd be missing a very insightful and wonderful experience.

...consider the following:

1) You're ok reading books that make a serious effort to historically locate human sexuality.

2) You recognize sex and desire are integral parts of our humanity and take many forms. This means you are comfortable reading scenes involving gay sex, sex as currency, and sex as love.

3) You're ok reading books that are not obviously character or plot driven. The best comparisons I can think of here are Jeanette Winterson or Tony Morrison. Bloom's language is not difficult but I want to warn you that the your particular reading psychology (taste) may work against you here. It is not surprising to me that so many readers had a difficult time trying to identify with Lillian. This book isn't about Lillian; Lillian is a vessel for a more general commentary the author is trying to make. I thought this was really obvious. Many readers are used to a more traditional book where the author does overtime to make the inner world of the protagonist alive so that the reader more easily identifies with the protagonist. Bloom doesn't really do anything like that. Lillian is what you make of her. Any conclusions or interpretations you take from her story are your entirely your own. Bloom makes no effort to push you any direction with regards to Lillian. Many readers find this disconcerting b/c they keep trying to force their expectations of how the book is supposed to read onto the text and become frustrated/disappointed that Lillian remains mysterious or that the book goes somewhere else. This can be observed in many other reviews for the book here.

4) You are ok with discontinuity in setting. Each location in the book is entirely new, independent of the previous ones, and contains its own set of characters. The author puts a strong emphasis on the hidden lives of the people around us and the strange places life can take us. I think this is where the true beauty of the book lies.

5) If you read some of the other reviews and felt that they were in any way ignorant/prudish/shallow you will probably love this book

6) The quality of the writing in this book is top notch. The metaphors and imagery are absolutely gorgeous and reflect Bloom's prodigious talent. I guarantee you will not be left unimpressed and this will become one of your favorite all-time books if you are ok with 1-5.

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I work at a bookstore in Seattle. Demographically I have found that overwhelming young (20's, 30's) liberal audiences enjoy this book.

I have been ordering books from Amazon for years and this is the first time I have felt compelled to write a review. My choices tend to be more literary and as a 68 yr. old woman, I have never wanted to read romance novels even when I was young. My college professor sent me a list of great literature of the world when I left college and that is what I have dedicated myself to read.

However! I happened upon Away by Amy Bloom just by chance and I have been swept away by adventure, romance and literature all in one book. Do not be fooled into thinking this is just for women, it isn't. It is the first book that I have had trouble laying down at night in a long time.

I have now ordered two of her books of short stories and can't wait to explore more of her writing.

Paula Rambo

I felt I was a part of a creative writing class gone wrong, (third person narration). It is as if there are two books here. The tedious first half is filled with pages of our heroine (Lillian) who is amused at the way her life has turned once she has arrived to the shores of her new country...this is after her family is brutally murdered. The second half is an unbelieveable quest to find her daughter. This of course gives her life meaning and purpose. The author pulls at all the cliches and hands them to us as if they should mean something. By the time we are to start the journey we are tired of Lillian's self absorbed coldness, and a supposed amoral veneer that is actually all there is. There is no depth to her. It is impossible to sympathize. She arrives in the second half of the book to some kind of personal understanding of her nature.... but by then we don't care. We still don't know who she is and what she stands for. This one left me feeling like I was trapped in a bad telenovela. Epic? I hardly think so.

This book did not hold my interest at all. I had received it as an early review and wondered what I missed upon reading so many positive comments during the initial 'push' of this book. I wondered if I read the same book as everyone else. Glad to see I'm not the only one with this opinion...

This novel portrays the lengths a person would go through when there is a strong enough motivation. Unfortunately, it was difficult for me to get through as I really had a hard time caring about the protagonist, Lillian Leyb. The story had a base which should have made you care ...and it did in the beginning. Lillian witnesses her entire family being murdered during a horrible Russian pogrom. The reader is not given any background on the actual event ...only in nightmares is the night retold. The daughter she tried to hide is believed to be dead along with her other family members. With no future in Russia, Lillian comes to America to start a new life with the help of a cousin already in New York.

Upon Lillian's arrival to New York you start to see the pattern her life takes when faced with different challenges ...she rises to them and accepts them for what they are ...a means to continue forward. However, for me this is where I start to become less interested in Lillian. At the point she is given the news that her daughter may still be alive, I had hoped to see Lillian become more vulnerable, allowing the reader to empathize with her as she begins her journey to find her daughter. Instead it felt as though Lillian is very one-dimensional. She is the vehicle used to introduce us to some interesting supporting characters. For many of these characters, you were given a summary of their life after Lillian has walked out of it. As the story ...and supporting characters... progressed, I began looking forward to the summary of Lillian's life...just to be done.

What a promising first 60 pages. We have an interesting character (Lillian) full of resolve and moral complexity, determined to eke out a life in New York. Then she hears that her daughter, whom she'd left for dead in a Russian pogrom, is alive and well in....Siberia. Suddenly this interesting character becomes a total idiot. Suddenly she decides that she needs to travel across the U.S. with no money, no plan, no friends, to reach Siberia in the hope of searching somewhere in that vast frozen wasteland (Where? Who knows?) for a little girl whom she'd hardly recognize anymore and who'd hardly recognize her. Not even a writer as talented as Bloom can pull this off. Lillian becomes utterly flattened as a character. Her inner life totally disappears. All the complexity is gone. What we have instead is a cardboard cutout (the Resolute Mom) who meets other cardboard cutouts on an utterly tiresome, completely unbelievable, and often ridiculous trek. The similes strain toward profundity but achieve only mundane cliche ("as gone as gone could be"), which only reveals the shallowness that the book inhabits. Bloom's writing is otherwise fine, but the overall effect, rather than gaining emotional force, left this reader feeling cheated and annoyed.

I finished this book last night and woke up wishing I was still reading it. Christian fundies and other prudes won't like it, but don't let them deter you from an extraordinary reading experience. The characters are drawn deep and true; they became very, very real to me--and I miss them. This author took a subject in which I have zero interest and wrote a book I could not put down. Prudes go elsewhere and booklovers buy this book and rejoice!

I had heard great things about this book and I was so disapointed. The characters are thinly drawn and uninteresting. I found it hard to root for or care about Lillian - she seemed so wooden and robotic.

Especially once she leaves NYC and heads out on her quest to get to Siberia - I simply lost all interest and only kept reading because I wanted to know if she found Sophie or not.

And it seems the author must have had a word limit because the book seems to end quite suddenly - which may be a blessing to some.

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book...until she left on her journey to find her daughter...then the character faded somewhat into an unrealistic adventure...then the work picked up at the end. I think Bloom has a wonderfully vivid style, and effective characters, but the character's search for her daughter just did not seem too plausible after awhile, and, yet, some of the scenes were so well drawn. Perhaps the protagonist should have stayed in New York or Seattle; I don't know, but I wanted more of her, and yet the end did satisfy me. I am now reading her short stories and find them to be quite good.