Becky's review
Away by Amy Bloom
"Away" is a sad book. It's the story of Lillian Leyb, a Jewish immigrant who comes to New York after seeing her entire family violently murdered in their Russian village. When she discovers that her daughter may still be alive and in hiding in Siberia, she sets off to find her, literally crossing the globe on foot. She survives however she can: by befriending a superstar family in the New York theatre scene, by kissing up to the matron of a women's prison, by throwing in her lot with a rich prostitute, by caring for a family of orphaned Eskimo boys in the Alaskan wild.
"Away"'s narrative style parallels Lillian's journey. At the beginning, it's very stream-of-consciousness, very fragmented: we get little flashbacks of the day Lillian lost her family, but nothing that we understand, just glimpses of color and shards of story we can't yet piece together. As Lillian starts to heal and her purpose becomes more clear, the story starts to take shape. The narrator's...more
"Away"'s narrative style parallels Lillian's journey. At the beginning, it's very stream-of-consciousness, very fragmented: we get little flashbacks of the day Lillian lost her family, but nothing that we understand, just glimpses of color and shards of story we can't yet piece together. As Lillian starts to heal and her purpose becomes more clear, the story starts to take shape. The narrator's...more
