false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg 197750 10 It was Henry James who first claimed the imagination of disaster, but in Amy Bloom's stunning second collection, she appears to have inherited the mantle. Most of the characters in <I>A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You</I> are pursued by at least one of the biological furies: cancer, miscarriage, Parkinson's disease. And even those with their health intact tend to be sick at heart, having run the gantlet of family life and suffered what the military men like to call friendly fire. Yet the effect of these brilliant stories is anything but dreary. Instead they produce an odd sense of elation--Bloom somehow persuades us that her characters will continue under their own steam long after we've closed the book, and she alternates hope and hopelessness in exactly the right, recognizable proportions.<p> Take the title story, in which a middle-aged mother is determined to see her daughter through the rigors of a sex-change operation. Jane puts up a good front, almost but not quite earning the title of Transsexual Mom of the Year, and supports her "handsome boy-girl" every step of the way. Yet the strain shows. And when she meets a supernaturally nice man, she can't quite credit her good fortune--even his appearance at her door with an armload of flowers touches off a fresh round of ambivalence: <blockquote> And standing on the little porch of the condo, barely enough room for two medium-size people and forty-eight roses, Jane sees that she has taken her place in the long and honorable line of fools for love: Don Quixote and Hermia and Oscar Wilde and Joe E. Brown, crowing with delight, clutching his straw boater and Jack Lemmon as the speedboat carries them off into a cockeyed and irresistible future. </blockquote> The inclusion of <I>Some Like It Hot</I>'s Joe E. Brown, who's gotten both more and less than he bargained for in his cross-dressing sweetheart, is a typically marvelous touch. And lest we think that Bloom has weighted the scales too heavily in favor of disillusion, Jane's new lover gets in the last word, citing the South Carolina state motto: "<I>Dum spiro, spero</I>.... While I breathe, I hope." Just keep breathing, the reader wants to say.<p> "Stars at Elbow and Foot" and "Rowing to Eden" are no less effective in their mingling of tragedy and sublime trivia. In two other stories, Bloom revives the Sampson clan, which she first introduced in <I>Come to Me</I>, and beautifully extends her mini-epic of mixed-race life without a grain of namby-pamby PC hesitation. And last but not least, there's "The Story," a tricky number in which Bloom seems to shoot to hell her own reputation for Chekhovian decency. Here we have a narrator who lies and dissembles, destroys her rival, and lives to tell the (metafictional) tale: "Even now I regard her destruction as a very good thing, and that undermines the necessary fictive texture of deep ambiguity, the roiling ambivalence that might give tension to the narrator's affection." In the end, though, Bloom is simply too gifted a writer to banish all seven types of ambiguity from her work. She understands that we are hopelessly divided creatures and cuts us the necessary, unsentimental slack. Or to put it another way, she forgives all--but forgets nothing. <I>--James Marcus</I> 1061064 2000 A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories total:645|5:168|4:273|3:159|2:38|1:7| 645 2492 895 79 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 4 2 false Thu Jun 21 07:02:30 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 21 07:04:45 -0700 2007
she st...more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 4 2 false Tue May 01 11:16:04 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 12 12:04:53 -0700 2007 more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 2 0 false Thu Oct 08 12:50:23 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 08 12:50:23 -0700 2009
Other than that, I found them incredibly boring. I thought the characters, with the exception of perhap...more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 4 0 false Sun Sep 13 07:02:07 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 13 07:22:17 -0700 2009 more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 3 0 false Fri Jan 30 13:37:51 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 16 15:57:21 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 30 13:37:51 -0800 2009 more...]]> 951838 0375502688 9780375502682 23 4 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179756145m/951838.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/951838.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You 1 0 false Thu Jun 04 10:31:19 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 15:02:22 -0700 2009 more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 2 0 false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Mar 07 19:41:53 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 08 13:42:03 -0800 2008
I'm really not one to be sensitive when reading, but there was something creepy about all of these stories; for example, there are two stories about a man...more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 4 0 false Fri Apr 04 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Feb 13 16:37:01 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 13 16:37:01 -0800 2008
Bloom has a comfortable, conversational way of telling a s...more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 1 0 false Fri Oct 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 11 18:36:25 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 23 18:58:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 951838 0375502688 9780375502682 23 4 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179756145m/951838.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/951838.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You 3 0 false Tue Oct 07 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Sep 29 06:59:05 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 08 06:20:00 -0700 2008 more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 3 0 false Thu Dec 25 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 18 06:32:12 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 11 10:45:35 -0800 2009 more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 3 0 false Mon Nov 16 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Oct 31 07:53:48 -0700 2009 Mon Nov 23 05:39:08 -0800 2009 more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 3 0 false Fri Dec 19 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 22 18:01:33 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 20 06:36:40 -0800 2008 more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 4 0 false Wed Dec 03 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 05 15:49:45 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 05 15:51:59 -0800 2008 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 0 0 false Thu Nov 29 07:45:08 -0800 2007 Thu Nov 29 07:47:05 -0800 2007
"Amy Bloom's Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. These two collections capture longing and loving and sex so beautif...more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 5 0 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon May 18 19:36:54 -0700 2009 Mon May 18 20:42:43 -0700 2009 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 3 0 false Thu Nov 20 13:18:29 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 20 13:19:21 -0800 2008 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 4 0 false Sun Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 19:19:09 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 15 11:36:18 -0800 2009 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 3 0 false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Nov 12 10:41:21 -0800 2007 Sun Nov 18 14:50:34 -0800 2007
The character development and personalities captured by Amy Bloom are really interesting and make for intense unfiltered views...more...]]> 197750 0375705570 9780375705571 610 74 3.86 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172607437m/197750.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197750.A_Blind_Man_Can_See_How_Much_I_Love_You_Stories 3 0 false Tue Feb 10 17:04:20 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 10 17:04:57 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=197750