LUCKY US is the title of Amy Bloom’s new novel and lucky us that we have such a writer in our midst, a writer of such elegant prose, a creator of such memorable characters, an advocate of truth, beauty and a picture of us.
Set in the decade that was primarily taken up with WWII, LUCKY US is ostensibly the story of two siblings, sisters Iris and Eva, who did not know of each other’s existence until their father’s wife died and Eva’s mother told her, “your father loves us more, but he’s got another family, a wife, and a girl a little older than you.”
It’s 1939 and Eva is twelve years old. Her mother abandons her to her father and sister and so begins an extraordinary and astonishing journey, an odyssey rich in adventure, incident and personality.
Iris, always the aspiring actress, forever had plans to escape Ohio for Hollywood, and had salted away fees earned by performance prizes to fund her tilt at Tinsel town. When their father’s fortunes falter, Iris allows Eva to accompany her to Los Angeles. A halcyon period ensues, where Iris looks set for stardom, but the sexual politics of the picture making town stall the rising star.
A career makeover comes from a Mexican makeup maven and the reconciliation of the daughters with the father, and it’s goodbye to Hollywood and hello the great white way.
Broadway or bust by way of Brooklyn and the pivotal meeting of a family cook and her mechanic husband that will shape and ripple the deep, vast and magnificent lake of their lives.
Religion, race, sex, war, reconciliation, regeneration are the cornerstones of Bloom’s beautifully orchestrated novel, an epic in economical prose, funny, wise, heart breaking and heart-warming, and honest.
As the story unfolds, you won’t know whether to shit or go blind, as one character says at the startling turn of events that snake and eddy and meander through this astonishing work.
Reading a work like LUCKY US humbles any writer attempting to review it. If one could only emulate the seemingly effortless storytelling, the elegant style, that finding a better way to put almost anything, in the hope to enthuse others to experience the sublime pleasures of these pages.
Word upon word, sentence upon sentence, paragraph upon paragraph, chapter upon chapter, LUCKY US is a glorious construction, a towering steeple on the temple of superior storytelling.
Featuring the strikingly beautiful Man Ray portrait of Nusch Eluard and Sonia Mosse as its cover, LUCKY US by Amy Bloom is published by GRANTA.