Come to Me: Stories [Hardcover]

Amy Bloom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1993

A first collection of short stories features tales of psychiatrists crossing professional boundaries, a small girl in need of love, a frightened father in need of redemption, and wives who become mistresses.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amy Bloom's 1993 collection, Come to Me, is filled with yearning mysteries of romantic and familial love that are far more complex than the phrase "love story" allows. The first sentence of the first story, "Love Is Not a Pie," evinces the contradictions, layers, and interconnections of her narrator's existence--and hooks the reader entirely. "In the middle of the eulogy at my mother's boring and heart-breaking funeral, I began to think about calling off the wedding." The title phrase means exactly what it says: Lila's mother didn't have a finite amount of affection and was lucky not to be forced to choose between love's accepted forms and a more unusual one: "People think that it can't be that way, but it can. You just have to find the right people." Lila realizes that she needs to get out of her engagement because she isn't ready for normality.

The unusual pervades these stories, and Bloom handles some outsized events with delicacy and humor. In "Sleepwalking," a new widow sends her stepson away after they've slept together, because she wants him to have a normal life. The author makes us aware that there's something terrible and foolhardy about this woman's decision. Several other characters find themselves in equally desperate situations, their only consolation being recollections of earlier bliss, often sensual: "It was like nothing else in my life, that river of love that I could dip into and leave and return to once more and find it still flowing." For them, memories of past happiness makes present sorrow bearable. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Bloom's remarkably consistent first collection of stories includes her award-winning "Silver Water," a sad remembrance of a mentally ill sister and the family that loves yet cannot help her. The story includes elements common to Bloom's work: female protagonists whose lives are changed through psychological trauma, often involving therapists or people embarked on therapy. This makes sense, since Bloom herself is a practicing therapist. She deftly explores the complexity of the therapist-patient relationship ("Song of Solomon" and the aptly titled, ironic "Psychoanalysis Changed My Life"); the subtle brutality of troubled families ("Love Is Not a Pie," "Sleepwalking," "When the Year Grows Old"); and the strange compromises struck by couples to maintain tenuous emotional connections ("Sleepwalking"). Taken together, however, Bloom's insights into human love and obsession tend to blur into a long and rather uniform psychoanalytic lesson, undercut occasionally by revelations. She's at her best in showing how people really think, as in a description of a self-effacing housewife's distracted thoughts during sex in "The Sight of You," or in the title story, in which Bloom achieves a soaring complexity in characters whose strange behavior eludes any simple psychological explanation.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 177 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (May 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060182369
• ISBN-13: 978-0060182366
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

AMY BLOOM is the author of two novels and two collections of short stories, one a nominee for the National Book Award and the other a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and numerous anthologies here and abroad. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon, among many other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. Her first book of nonfiction, Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude, is an exploration of the varieties of gender. A practicing psychotherapist, she lives in Connecticut and teaches at Yale University. Multiple Audie®; Award winner Barbara Rosenblat has been named a "Voice of the Twentieth Century" by AudioFile magazine. The New York Times writes,"Watch Ms. Rosenblat work...and you get the sense that even an Oscar winner might not be able to pull this off." She created the role of "Mrs. Medlock" in the Tony®; Award-winning Broadway musical The Secret Garden.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An unflinchingly honest look at relationships, December 7, 2000

By 

Box2er (Chandler, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Come to Me: Stories (Paperback)

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.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful collection of short stories!, July 14, 1999

By 

"slwheelock" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Come to Me: Stories (Paperback)

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.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful collection, Bloom has an amazing voice!, February 5, 2005

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Come to Me: Stories (Paperback)

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.