Customer Reviews

Love Invents Us

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Amy Bloom's stunning writing made what might have been a depressing story a terrific read. I found her characters not only believable, but sympathetic and fraught with the complicated baggage that makes real people interesting--and at times intolerable, as these characters were.

Elizabeth Taube's quest for love begins with the strange fur salesman Mr. Klein and continues through a series of longer-lasting relationships, none of which completely satisfies her--although all of them do, as the title says, invent her. From Mrs. Hill, who teaches her how love through service, to Mr. Stone, her obsessed English teacher, to her parents' disconnected affection, Elizabeth learns about love in the complex forms in which it presents itself to us, and Amy Bloom shows us how Elizabeth learns in elegant prose.

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.

This is a book that throughout the year I have found myself asking others to read. It stayed with me... and you would be doing yourself a favor if you read it.

Ordinary people--the kind we meet in the deli and barely notice--are rendered extrardinary through Amy Bloom's knowing eyes. So many stark truths about life's realities are spoken so matter-of- factly that one could miss them if one were not paying attention. And in the lives of Elizabeth, Huddie and Max, so separate yet so closely interleaved--like contiguous layers of onionskin at opposing poles--we see patterns that repeat themselves in childhood, at puberty, in middle age--ways of being that took root before we knew what we were doing. "Elizabeth knew that the bad things that had happened to her were no worse than other people's bad things; they were pretty small potatoes, in fact, compared to terminal cancer, death by famine, incest, quadriplegic paralysis." p.132 Amy Bloom's lyrical writing is like a benediction on what, in less skillful hands, would be tawdry lives. Love not only invents Elizabeth Taube; it is the driving force of her existence and the exclusive theme of the novel. So here is a syllogism for you: If love invents us, we exist through love; if existence is good, then love is good. Ah, but is it? Here, surely, is love gone awry. Here is a young girl irretrievably damaged by the illicit desires of older men who should have known better. Old Mr. Klein's furs turn the lost child Elizabeth into a beautiful princess, but the damage is done, the acceptance of the unacceptable is learned before puberty. Ignored by her parents and deprived of wholesome love, Elizabeth inevitably takes love where it is offered. Who among us could not accept love that is freely given; nevermind, the consequences. The pattern is set and pursues Elizabeth as theme and variations through middle age. Bloom's toneless style, that infuses the scenes with the love she writes about, renders Elizabeth's various loves as beautiful things, to be savored and thought over. Who among us has not had a crush on a high school English teacher? From Bloom's imagination unfolds the probable outcome of a teenage crush acted out to its less-than-ideal conclusion. Here, in the sweetest language and imagery possible, so sweet we almost don't recognize it for the horror that it is, is a story of a woman, from childhood to middle age, who's damaged life seems almost enviable it is presented to us so beautifully and so lovingly. Despite the underside-of-life quality of the relationships, Elizabeth is like a mirror. I see myself in her deepest feelings, the temptations life has offered, the damaging random events that set us irretrievably down certain paths. Perhaps Elizabeth never aspired to more than the fundamentals: life, love, motherhood--and then we die. She starts out alone and in the end she is still alone. For her, not only is love universal, it is also eternal. These ordinary lives take on almost epic proportion through exquisite portraiture. Bloom's lyric brush strokes fill us with nostalgia for Elizabeth's lost potential. But perhaps nothing was lost after all, because she learned the message some say we are here to learn: Let us all love one another. Let us speak together of love, but not romance. Romance died at Furs by Klein. No one lives happily ever after, yet here they fail to do so in the most eloquently poetic manner. What a pitty to lose romance before puberty. When I was ten, the same age as Elizabeth Taube, I fell and cut my knee open--a great gaping gash that stretched so badly as it healed it looked like my knee had a mouth. The first thing I thought of when I saw the wound was that now I could not grow up to be Miss America. I actually mourned this loss for many years. But this was as nothing compared to what Elizabeth lost at the same age. Adventures of the heart, especially those with forbidden overtones, consume us and drag us along with their powerful pull--passion, desire, compulsion to know what will be. Elizabeth's affaires de coeur are our own fantasies played out to their illogical conclusion. One might be tempted to use the word "perverse" in describing her obsessions, but we know too many of us have had brushes with the likes of Mr. Klein, or have had crushes on teachers like Max Stone, or have had boyfriends of whom no one approved, or have loved and been unmercifully used by a manipulative adult. Intimations of such near things are evoked, conjured up and as these dramas play themselves out in Elizabeth's life, we see the mirror reflect back at us and we feel the common bond of her humanity. Love, indeed, does invent us.

I have admired Amy Bloom's short stories, and her first full length novel, "Love Invents Us" is adapted from one called "Take My Hand", which was published in the New Yorker in '97. I still have my dog-earred copy -- I thought this was one of the finest modern short stories I ever read...brilliant characterization and dialogue. Basically, it's the section of the novel where the teenage Elizabeth cares for the elderly Mrs. Hill, at the same time beginning an inappropriate flirtation with her middle aged junior high teacher, Max Stone.

The story ends ambivalently, with Mr. Stone initially driven off by Mrs. Hill's common sense...but with Elizabeth (who was already digitally raped at the age of 10 by a family friend) continuing to pursue and egg the older man on.

I was expecting the novel to continue the story, in equally amazing and unpredictable ways. But Ms. Bloom is clearly more comfortable (as are many fine modern writers) with the short story format. An entire novel simply gets away from her. This is most obvious in the way she continually changes point-of-view -- from first person to second to third. It is confusing and very distracting, and does nothing to tell the story.

And what IS the story? The short story version ("Take My Hand") seems to be about a somewhat damaged girl (molested, cold parents, given to shoplifting) who is drawn to danger and inappropriate sexual partners. But in the novel, Elizabeth ends up living a cold and lonely existence, into middle age, after a teenage mixed-race romance ends badly. This doesn't seem convincing -- most of us have loads of "teen drama" and yet go on to lead normally fulfilling lives.

I am more troubled by the way the author brushes over the issue of sexual molestation of young girls. Firstly, the novel is set in the very early 70s, something that was so difficult for me to pick up that I had to reread some sections twice. (You could read a long time thinking it was set in the 80s or 90s.) Elizabeth is molested at least three times -- at about age 9 by a demented Russian furrier, at 10 by a family friend, and then in the most troubling section, over a period of 12 years (from around 14 - 26) by her junior high teacher, Max Stone. Mr. Stone is a bewildering character -- at times we are expected to sympathize with his "mid-life crisis", but he's dealing with it by manipulating and sexualizing a little girl. And what's with Elizabeth returning to care for him as he dies (at around 61!) a traumatic death, as if she was a loving daugher? All I felt in these sections was "ewww". You'd think by 26, Elizabeth would have reached the realization that she had been molested and used, in a very ugly way, and by a deeply disturbed man....who most likely had molested other junior high students under his care over the years.

Maybe I am sensitized to this, because I had a dear friend in high school who was molested by a "favorite teacher", who she also thought was befriending a lonely girl, when in fact, he was just a pervert who liked young girls and couldn't relate to his own wife.

Even if this part of the book worked better, "Love Invents Us" is disjointed and meadering...squandering Ms. Bloom's talent and ending up a disappointing and tiresome mess. If a student gave me a manuscript like this, I'd tell them it needed around 2-3 hardnosed rewrites before it was even worth submitting.

From a lesser talent, I'd shrug this off -- from someone of Amy Bloom's ability, this is just sad. For my part, I'll stick with the superb short story, "Take My Hand", and pretend this novel was never written.

If this book didn't rock your boat your sitting in an old age home.
Blooms internal dialogue doesn't miss a beat. Her descriptions of what its like to grow up in the Ol USA is accurate to the nth degree, that is if your not part of our alcohol crazed culture, our workaholic world. Her written word is a sledge hammer of insight, a carousel of light, a continual barrage of unending empathy into the tortuous moments of striving to find love that continually evades our grasp.

Elizabeth Taube is an orphan by neglect; her interior designer mother barely notices her, and her father is not around since her parents divorce. She is overweight and made fun of by her peers, so she accepts love and attention from whoever offers it. First is the owner of a fur shop who encourages her to play dress up while she watches, later a favorite teacher takes an interest in her. After a series of sexual encounters with boys (and a girl) her own age, Elizabeth finally finds a loving relationship with someone her own age. Unfortunately, her husband Huddie also happens to be black, and his family and the community are not accepting of their relationship.

Written mostly in the first person, Love Invents Us follows Elizabeth's relationships with the teacher and Huddie throughout the years. Readers of Amy Bloom's short fiction know that she is masterful at depicting the intricacies and complexities of human emotions. Bloom does her protagonist justice by not offering a happy ending, but the last sentence may leave the reader puzzled. Though at times morally disturbing (because of the themes of sexual abuse and the protagonists acceptance of some of her early relationships as normal), Love Invents Us is elegantly written.

Love Invents Us is about a girl who was emotionally abandoned by her parents but who does not emotionally abandon others. Like many who are unloved by their parents, Elizabeth Taube reaches out to others; sometimes sexually, sometimes in a caregiver role, and sometimes in a maternal way. The book makes it clear that although Elizabeth didn't have a conventional childhood with loving parents, she took note and appreciated the little things her parents did do, to show what limited love they had. She didn't damn them for it, and in fact ended up taking care of her dying mother, and re-inventing their relationship through that caretaking role. So despite the emotional abandonment by her parents, she still learned to love. That says a lot for her resiliency and strength.

And, she had two major adults in her life who sincerely did love her--an elderly ill woman, and her English teacher. Each of these people might have been extremely self-focused and perhaps selfish in their love of her, but they bothered to know her. To notice details about her that her parents didn't notice. And, they spoke to her honestly--they saw through her. The elderly woman knew Elizabeth was stealing from her, and let her know it; the English teacher spoke bluntly to her, as well. They did not shy away from the truth. And as I see it, that is part of what love is.

And the same with the love of her life, Huddie--he spoke to her with blunt honesty. There was mention of many hours they spent together, talking, when they were young--about politics, about life in general--and you can see by their dialogue that their intimacy grew not only through their wonderful sexual relationship, but because of the dialogues they had, and because they knew eachothers' faults and still accepted eachother. Even up to the end, they talked to eachother like one's closest friends talk to eachother. It is almost enviable to have had a relationship that close, and not everyone achieves it.

In the end, while she is once again abandoned, she is also the abandoner. She realizes that she can stand alone, and that she might even prefer being alone--because she has another vital reason to live; she is a mother. The mother of an extremely unique child, who she swears to protect forever. And her need to protect this child is even stronger than her need to hold onto Luddie. So once again, this shows the enormous strength and ability to love, within her. Yes, she doesn't have a lot of material wealth and she has never achieved to her potential--but given her early childhood experiences, she has done extremely well for herself. I felt proud of her at the end.

The title also refers to Elizabeth's mother, who has hidden her past from others by "re-inventing" herself through each man she marries, and making the best of it. And, it refers to the role of mothers in general, who invent themselves through their children, and by virtue of being mothers.

The book has left me feeling empty because I want more of it. I loved the characters and saw nothing repugnant in any of them, unless you consider flaws repugnant.

This is one of the most well-written novels I have ever read. It is intelligently written and poetically written. I am sending this novel to my closest friend. I am grateful to the used book store where I found it.

Amy Bloom's Love Invents Us can sometimes be a very beautiful book with a challenging character at its centre and it can sometimes be a very frustrating book with a challenging charater at its centre. Ultimately, it is a satisfying read but the journey is not always pleasant as Elizabeth grows up and grows older. The male characters are not always drawn as finely but it is, of course, not their story but Elizabeth's. The need for love creates and sustains this story and gives the novel its razor sharp painfulness. I wished I enjoyed the character of Elizabeth more as then it would be her personality that took me through this novel instead of being propelled by the wonderful prose of Amy Bloom over the slow spots. In the end, a good book if not always a pleasure.

One is reminded of the child, Lolita, and her emergence fromnymph to woman. If only Nabokov could have been as boldly honest asBloom's narrator! This is a classic of literature, expressing so well what so many women only dare to pen in their diaries.