Lucky Us (Bloom)

Lucky Us 
Amy Bloom, 2014
Random House
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400067244


Summary
My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.

So begins the story of teenage half sisters Eva and Iris in this brilliantly written, deeply moving, and fantastically funny novel by the beloved and critically acclaimed author of Away.

Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star, and Eva, the sidekick, journey across 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the sisters from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine through a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war.  Filled with memorable characters and unexpected turns, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, these unforgettable people love, lie, cheat, and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1953
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A. Weslyan University; M.S.W. Smith College
• Awards—Costa Award; National Magazine Award
• Currently—lives in Connecticut, USA


Amy Bloom is an American writer best know for her 2007 novel Away. Her next novel, Lucky Us, was published in 2014. She has also penned short stories—in 1993 her collection, Come to Me, was nominated for National Book Award, and in 2000 her collection, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Bloom received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater/Political Science, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Wesleyan University, and a M.S.W. (Master of Social Work) from Smith College.

Having trained and practiced as a clinical social worker, Bloom used her psychotherapeutic background in creating the Lifetime Television network TV show, State of Mind. She is listed as creator, co-executive producer, and head writer for the series, which examines the professional lives of psychotherapists.

Bloom has also written articles in periodicals including The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon.com. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories and several other anthologies, and has won a National Magazine Award.

Currently, Bloom is a University Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University (as of 2010). Previously, she was a senior lecturer of Creative Writing in the department of English at Yale University, where she taught Advanced Fiction Writing, Writing for Television, and Writing for Children.

In August 2012, Bloom published her first children's book entitled Little Sweet Potato. According to the New York Times, the story "follows the trials of a 'lumpy, dumpy, bumpy' young tuber who is accidentally expelled from his garden patch and must find a new home. On his journey, he is castigated first by a bunch of xenophobic carrots, then by a menacing gang of vain eggplants."

Bloom resides in Connecticut. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/3/2014.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [E]verything here is fresh.... Told partially from Eva’s perspective, and with epistolary interludes...Eva’s world is one of endless opportunities for reinvention—and redemption—if one only takes them. With a spare and trusting style, Bloom invites readers to fill the spaces her pretty prose allows, with true and beautiful results. —Annie Bostrom
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