Customer Reviews

Come to Me

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I came to know Amy Bloom in my early twenties as a subscriber to Glamour Magazine. Her column was always witty. Always insightful. Imagine my delight, when I heard her interviewed on NPR. Listening to her talk about Come to Me had me severly intrigued and I purchased it that afternoon. What a fascinating look at relationship dynamics -- I read it in a few hours. Her stories offer no apologies, only unflinching honesty. You often feel like you have happened upon people you shouldn't be overhearing as they work through their grief, anomisity, anger and fear. If you can read it with the open-mindedness Ms. Bloom intended, you will have read one of the best short story collections out there.

Amy Bloom offers an insightful perspective into peoples' lives with this collection of short stories. She gives readers realistic & beautiful characters, unique plot lines, and lyrical writing. What amazed me most about this book was Ms. Bloom's willingness to expose her characters' emotions and flaws without explanation or apology. Through her wonderfully provocative writing style, Ms. Bloom allows readers to have their own reactions to her stories, and does so without judgment. Readers will appreciate the humanity in each of her characters.

I found this collection by accident and didn't know what to expect. Short stories can be so good, or so bad. These stories are very good, consistently good. These are stories of people searching for something missing in their lives, well told stories with heart, soul and humor. Amy Bloom has quite a unique voice. The stories center on romantic love and family woes, but Bloom adds a spark of originality to otherwise common subject matters. My favorite stories are "Sleepwalking," "Henry and Marie," "The Sight of You," and "Semper Fidelis." If you're as enthusiastic about memorable, literary short stories as I am, then I recommend Come to Me most highly. Enjoy this collection.

I have never read Amy Bloom's books before, but I have always been drawn to them on the shelf. Thirteen stories, some woven together, some not connected at all. But, all of them kept me reading. Many of the stories ended with a quiet sadness.

My favorites were:

Love is not a Pie--a woman thinks back to when her mom was alive, and when she figured out that she had a lover and a husband--who shared her.
Sleepwalking--This one was like a car crash, I wanted to look away, but I had to keep reading. About a stepmothers worry that she ruined her stepsons life, in a single moment.

The Sight of You--A woman thinks of, and contemplates whether she should stay with her lover or her husband.

Faultlines--A man "befriends" another woman, while her husband and his wife look the other way.

When the Year Grows Old--A teenaged girl comes home one day and finds her mother's look and personality completely different from when she last saw her.

I liked some of the other ones as well, but these stood out to me the most. I will definitely read more of Amy Bloom in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed every single story as varied as they were, the author does not judge the characters and the different psychological aspects of each personality added alot of dimension to what could have been ordinary stories of love, passion and loss instead they are fascinating stories of LIFE! I also recommend Elizabeth Berg to readers who like Bloom. Thank you for introducing me to this author whom I could not even find at our large local book store. I will order her novel next "Love Invents Us"...

I bought this book because it's always interesting to see what type of literary fiction psychoanalysts come up with. I wasn't too impressed with the first half of the collection. I found the characters rather dull and flat and the dialog a bit forced ("Love is Not a Pie" is the exception). For example, "Song of Solomon" is awful -- don't bother reading it. However, "Silver Water" in the Three Stories section is beautifully written, very realistic, and hits you exactly where a story of this nature should. As the collection progresses, the writing and weaving of Amy Bloom's stories get better. Skip the first section and this book is a delight.

This is a superb collection of short stories, a genre of which I'm not usually very fond. But each story is a gem of one or more aspects of the human condition, which Bloom recounts with humor, understanding, and, most importantly, without judgement. Her voice is authentic and never disappoints.

I love reading stories in which the characters seem like they could be just a phone call away. It wasn't one story or another that touched me, it was the small and beautiful details that Bloom weaved through each one that made this collectin a pleasure to read. Sometimes connecting with other humans is hard, but the characters Bloom has created bring out such a realness and vulnerablity that we can miss in our daily lives.

This is a quiet little collection that is at once poignant and hilarious. It's about people like us, fragile, loving, caring, jealous, neat, messy, and most of all, human. Each story is a peek into someone else's living room window. This is a fine collection, especially for short story lovers.

Amy Bloom surpasses the majority of modern and postmodern writers in her ability to walk us along the thin line between bliss and sorrow, hope and despair, often tempting us to jump or fall, but ultimately maintaining her course and bringing us to the end where the line dissolves. Her language is sensual decadence for the reader, but her control and neutrality towards beauty enable her to escape the pitfall of sentimentality.
_Love Invents Us_, a novel which she developed out of one of the stories found here ("Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines"), is certainly worth the read, particularly for fans of this book.