Come to Me: Stories

Come to Me: Stories

National Book Award Finalist "Bloom writes about passion—shameful, blissful and perverse. . . . Her voice is sure and brisk, her language often beautiful; the result is humorous and well as heartrending fiction. . . . Her work has the power both to disturb and to console." — New York Times Book Review "A wonderful collection of stories by a writer of amazing skill, intelligence and compassion. Come to Me is a debut which leaves the reader begging for more." —Alice Hoffman This stunning collection of stories from New York Times bestselling author Amy Bloom takes us into the inner worlds of families, the hidden corners of marriages and affairs and friendships, and introduces us to people whose lives are shaken and changed by love. This is fiction that stays with you long after you've turned the last page, that celebrates the flawed dignity of the human and reminds us all of the fine venture of living in grace and hope in the worlds we are born to and make. 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. "Bloom writes about passion—shameful, blissful and perverse. . . . Her voice is sure and brisk, her language often beautiful; the result is humorous and well as heartrending fiction. . . . Her work has the power both to disturb and to console." - New York Times Book Review "A wonderful collection of stories by a writer of amazing skill, intelligence and compassion. Come to Me is a debut which leaves the reader begging for more." - Alice Hoffman "I feel as though before discovering Amy Bloom, I was lost, and now I'm found." - Ruth Coughlin, Detroit News "Amy Bloom has many voices and lives many lives. . . . Come to Me is charged from the first line. . . . Then step by step it gathers weight, texture, and power, and suddenly it ends with what is really another beginning. . . . We know we are in the hands of a real writer." - Margo Jefferson, New York Times "What this gifted storyteller offers on every page is an offer impossible to refuse: Come in, sit down and prepare to be beguiled. . . . Bloom is the psychotherapist as alchemist, transmuting the messy dross of everyday life into the gold of artfully shaped fiction." - Newsday Nominated for a National Book Award, this fresh and stunning collection of stories takes the reader deep into the heart of the most alarming and joyful human relationships. In the middle of the eulogy at my mother's boring and heartbreaking funeral, I began to think about calling off the wedding. August 21 did not seem like a good date, John Wescott did not seem like a good person to marry, and I couldn't see myself in the long white silk gown Mrs. Wescott had offered me. We had gotten engaged at Christmas, while my mother was starting to die; she died in May, earlier than we had expected. When the minister said, "She was a rare spirit, full of the kind of bravery and joy which inspires others," I stared at the pale blue ceiling and thought, "My mother would not have wanted me to spend my life with this man." He had asked me if I wanted him to come to the funeral from Boston, and I said no. And so he didn't, respecting my autonomy and so forth. I think he should have known that I was just being considerate. After the funeral, we took the little box of ashes back to the house and entertained everybody who came by to pay their respects. Lots of my father's law school colleagues, a few of his former students, my uncle Steve and his new wife, my cousins (whom my sister Lizzie and I always referre