Amy Bloom: Love Invents Us

He smiles. “I’m here. Right here.”

“No matter what?”

“Well. That’s a lot of ground. Yes, no matter what. No one’s going to die from this. And I won’t have to shuffle off this mortal coil knowing I lived the wrong life.”

He takes my hand. “And what’re you thinking? Elizabeth?”

“Nothing.”

“You lying hound.”

“Yup. And I won’t tell you.” And I cant: pictures of him trembling over me a million years ago; of Max’s face — the first Max — peevish and remorseful in the face of death; the faint, nameless image of my Max’s father, blond and tall, foolish but not unkind and not unattractive in his uniform, in bed for twenty-four hours straight until he shipped out, as I hoped he would, and now I watch my son for signs of stupidity and wanderlust; Margaret and Sol reading silently after I’d gone to bed and come out again to see what grown-ups did—“Nothing,” my mother said, “we do nothing”; my easy cloistered evenings, doing laundry, making lunch, cutting coupons, playing with Maxie and his Claudette Colbert paper dolls, of which Huddie will surely disapprove, and they will fight and Max will weep and Huddie will turn to dark unreadable stone, and long for the sensible ease of June and the pleasant routine of childless, healthy middle age. And I surely cannot tell him that I’m no more good for me or for him than I ever was, that I will disappoint and confuse him, that I’ve been alone my whole life, and that it may really be too hard and too late, not even desirable, after such long, familiar cold, to be known, and heard, and seen.

“It’s late,” I say.

“It’s a long drive,” he says.

If this were really the end, if this were only my story, I would tell you everything.

I have had the assistance and wisdom of my friends the Reverend Robert Thompson and Nadine Abraham-Thompson, the linguistic help of Josie Zelinka, and the medical insight of Dr. Ron Nudel.

I am grateful to my friend and agent, Phyllis Wender, who knows good from bad and right from wrong and helps me navigate the minefields and mousetraps of the literary world.

I have been lucky in my Random House editor, Kate Medina, a class act, a good captain, and such a mixture of will and savvy that if the act of Creation had been left: to her, our world would have been finished in only four days, and with elegance.

My friends and family have provided kind criticism, ungrudging and generous support, and tolerance of all kinds. I am especially grateful to Joy Johannessen, whose supernatural ability to read, see, and understand what is on the page and off has made all the difference.

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The questions, discussion topics, author biography, and suggested reading list that follow are intended to enhance your group’s reading of Amy Bloom’s Love Invents Us . We hope they will give you a number of interesting angles from which to view this rich novel of passion, desire, and the universal search for belonging.

READER’S GUIDE

1. Can you explain why Amy Bloom has given her novel the title Love Invents Us ? How are the various characters in the book invented or defined by love rather than, for instance, by family or social identity? Does Mr. Klein take advantage of an innocent child, or is his relationship with Elizabeth a positive one? Does Bloom portray Mr. Klein with affection, or does she imply that his feelings for Elizabeth are not really benign?

2. Why do you think Elizabeth’s mother has developed into the kind of person she has? “Guilt and love were as foreign to her as butter and sugar” [p. 9], Elizabeth says. Do you think that is true, or do you see evidence of love in the mother’s feelings for her daughter?

3. Is it safe to say that Elizabeth seeks parental figures in the older men in her life — Mr. Klein, Mr. Canetti, and Max Stone — or is this formulation too simplistic? Is her interest in older men due to some essential lack in her own family?

4. Why does Elizabeth steal?

5. How would you characterize the relationship between Elizabeth and Mrs. Hill? What does Mrs. Hill provide that Elizabeth’s mother has never given her, and what does Elizabeth give Mrs. Hill that is not provided by her daughter, Vivian?

6. How much affection does Elizabeth feel for her father, and how much scorn? To which of her parents does she feel closer?

7. Why does Elizabeth arrange for Max and Mrs. Hill to meet [p. 55]? What does she hope the visit between them will bring about, and does she get what she wants from that visit?

8. If Elizabeth doesn’t like Max’s touch, why does she keep the “affair” going for so long? What is it about him that fulfills an essential need in her? Do you find that Elizabeth is cruel to Max, a “tease”?

9. Can you explain Elizabeth’s emotions and reactions after Max uses the vibrator to have surrogate sex with her? Why does she refuse to communicate with Max, then call him again after a couple of months have gone by [p. 69]?

10. What effect does Elizabeth’s miscarriage have on her thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and priorities? In what ways does it change her life forever? Afterward, she says, “I wanted not to abandon anyone ever again. I wanted to be good” [p. 84]. What does she mean?

11. Why does the author have Elizabeth narrate Part One, switch to third-person narration in Part Two, and then back to Elizabeth in Part Three? What effect do these changes have upon the experience of reading the story?

12. Why don’t Burf and Arlene relent and let Huddie’s letters be sent to Elizabeth? To whom are they being loyal, and are they right to do as they do?

13. How have Huddie’s parents, Gus and Nadine, affected his life and helped to make him what he is? Do you have any respect for Gus’s point of view, or do you think he is unnecessarily harsh with Huddie? To what extent does the issue of race enter into his decision to send Huddie away from home?

14. At Mrs. Hill’s funeral, Elizabeth comes up against “the slap-obvious truth that this place was not her home, any more than her mother’s house was, that her only home had been Mrs. Hill’s footstool and Huddie’s narrow bed” [p. 110]. What concept of “home” does the novel finally endorse?

15. Why does Elizabeth decide to care for Max when he becomes ill? Does her decision spring from guilt or from love?

16. When she fears that Max may be dying, Elizabeth reflects that “He was a good father” [p. 170]. What does she mean by this? Is it really as a father that she sees Max?

17. Why did Huddie choose to marry June, of all the women he could have married, and what makes their marriage work? When Huddie refuses to leave June for Elizabeth, she calls him a “gutless son-of-a bitch” [p. 178]. Do you agree with her opinion that Hud-die shows gutlessness at this point, or is his decision a brave one? Why does he finally decide, fifteen years later, to come back to Elizabeth?

AMY BLOOM

Amy Bloom is the author of the bestselling and acclaimed novel Away; Come to Me , a National Book Award finalist; A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You , nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Love Invents Us ; and Normal . Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction , and many other anthologies here and abroad. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Granta , and Slate , among other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. Bloom is the Kim-Frank Family University Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University.