Selected Book
Away: A Novel
- Paperback
- Author: Amy Bloom
- Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
- Release Date: June 2008
- ISBN-10: 0812977793
- ISBN-13: 9780812977790
- List Price: $14.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryPanoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Chicken Soup Potboiler
Rating:
I began reading this book with high hopes but somewhere after Lillian decides to leave the Yiddish theater and to return to Siberia, I began to sense that this adventure story was a hoax. I followed Lillian through each separate adventure feeling as if I were watching a serialized potboiler. I stopped believing in the character and felt the author plodding along, putting her main character into one absurd situation after another, leaning heavily on sex and violence to keep the narrative moving. I cannot say the novel didn't hold my interest. I wanted to know if she ever found her daughter. That kept me reading. But the book felt like a silent film satire in places, especially in the passages about her struggle for survival. What is this? "The Perils of Pauline"????? I expected a scene in which she was lashed to the railroad tracks with the train speeding in her direction. The author's habit of summarizing what happens to each character after the end of the novel becomes repetitive and I was disappointed in the ending. I would have given Lillian a more dramatic fate than turning her into an Alaskan housefrau who can see Russia from her window. Juxtaposing Soviet USSR, the Lower East Side and honkey-tonk Alaska is no mean feat and Bloom gets credit for great research and a broad interesting landscape. Her main character, however, is basically not very sympathetic or interesting and, alas, as completely synthetic as a plastic matzoh ball.
Away by Amy Bloom 4 - 4.5 Stars
Rating:
Where to begin...
One day, when I grow up, I want to be as strong-willed as Lillian, the main character. To be driven by such a deep love and will to travel in the 1920s across America, through Alaska, to find your way home...
Lillian is a young immigrant who moves to America (NYC, from Russia, to find a better life and make a new start after her family brutally murdered. During this horrible time in her life, she begs her daughter to hide. After the tragedy she can not find her daughter. After countless searching she comes to America.
Lillians story is lyrical as it moves from one scenario to the next; flowing like water. Then one day, she gets word that her daughter, Sophie, is still alive. So, off she sets across the lands, to go home and find her daughter.
Just a great book, wonderfully written. At times... I wished it was a true story. 4 - 4.5 stars out of 5
There's More to Every Story
Rating:
"Everyone has two memories. The one you can tell and the one that is stuck to the underside of that, the dark, tarry smear of what happened."
I pulled this quote out of the book because it really embodied the soul of Lillian's story. It's as though we're skating on a frozen lake -- we see Lillian and the other characters as they move through the pages of the story and we hear some of their thoughts. The emotional turmoil and the thoughts too dark or tragic to be voiced, however, are left just under the surface, in the depths of the lake, to be inferred or guessed at by the reader. As in life, there's more to every story.
I read Bloom's short story collection Come to Me last year, and was looking forward to reading one of her novels. I ended up listening to the audio book on my way home from school last week and fell in love with Bloom's descriptive and poignant writing style all over again.
Lillian immigrates to New York City in the 1920s from Turov, Russia after her family is murdered. She sets herself up as the mistress to a father/son pair and lives comfortably in New York, but when she hears that her daughter, Sophie, may have survived and been taken to Siberia by another family, Lillian sets off to find her. Unable to afford the sea voyage home, she maps her route in the opposite direction and plans to cross from Alaska to Russia via the Bering Strait.
What I loved about this book, aside from the beautiful writing, was that as each character exits Lillian's story, we are offered a glimpse into their future. This book is about Lillian's journey, but the people that star in her story also have journeys of their own. Each character has a history and a depth. Bloom has created an entire world around her main character.
vulgar and disgusting
Rating:
I was very disgusted with this book. It was the first book I read by Amy Bloom and it will be the last. My book club picked this book as our book for November from a Book club companion guide we receive from Random House readers circle. Everything they had to say about the book made it seem like a good choice, but one thing you don't know about a book until you start to read it is the language, tone, and sexuality of the book. I think this book was written using very vulgar language and describing sexually things in to much detail. The book might have a good story line, but the way it was written to me, and the other members of my book club, is disgusting. Not one of the members in by book club finished the book.
I would love for publishing companies to include some king of guide to the content of the book.
READ THIS BOOK!
Rating:
I LOVED this book. I picked it up at the airport before a long flight because...wait for it...I liked the cover. I was transported. It is unlike any book I have ever read, and I've read a few. It was spare and neat, and yet at the same time, beautifully and heartbreakingly descriptive. I loved that every time you thought you had it figured out, and knew what was going to happen next, you were surprised. It was a revelation!
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