Come to Me

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From the cover:

This stunning collection of stories – two of them honored by inclusion in Best American Short Stories in consecutive years – 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: a grieving mother in need of comfort; a frightened father in need of redemption; wives who become mistresses and regret it, or don’t; a psychiatrist crashing through professional boundaries to provide for her husband and son; a model wife and mother who inexplicably descends to the basement to commune with the seventeenth-century poet Anne Finch; a young woman yielding to her dying husband’s wish to hear about the affairs she’s been having during his illness; a little girl who shyly models Furs by Klein, with Klein looking on in love and sorrow; Rose of the crystal-clear voice and psychotic episodes.

Amy Bloom holds her characters close to us as they encounter the everyday mysteries of need and desire, showing us tenderness and humor in the midst of grief and sorrow, laying bare their loyalties and loves, their fear and their courage, their folly and their faith. She writes the kind of fiction that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page, the kind that keeps you company and watches you on your way, 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.

Reviews:

“I had a wonderful time reading Amy Bloom’s stories. They’re as fresh as paint, and full of surprises, and skill, and wit.” – Alice Adams

“Ms. Bloom writes about passion: shameful, blissful and perverse. … Her voice is sure and brisk, her language often beautiful; the result is humorous as well as heartrending fiction. . . . Ms. Bloom is entertaining, wise and tolerant. 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 writes about the young, the old, the mad, the sane, Jews, Catholics, whites, blacks, men, women, furriers, musicians, doctors, young mothers, people dying, people living — oh, does she ever write about people living! The point-of-view shifts are endlessly fascinating, the voices in perfect tune. She can handle unspeakable pain with the quiet authority of a Chekhov, but has an even rarer gift: she describes happiness so that we can share in it. This is a book of love.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

“What this gifted storyteller offers on every page is an offer impossible to refuse: Come in, sit down and prepare to be beguiled. . . . Bloom dramatizes her concerns with a delicate touch. . . . One is struck especially by her seamless plotting, the way her stories flow effortless toward a conclusion that is not so much inevitable- since it may be quite startling- as fitting. . . . Bloom is the psychotherapist as alchemist, trnasmuting the messy dross of everyday life into the gold of artfully shaped fiction.” – Dan Cryer, Newsday