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bmurray153's review
4.0
I have had a winning streak with short stories. All of the collections I have picked up over the last year have been absolutely fantastic, and this is no exception. This is some of the tightest storytelling I have come across. Each story packs a great punch and lingers long after you finish. Loved it.
miss_tricia's review
2.0
The title sounds like "I love you so much that anyone can see it" but the book reads like "Because there is literally no love here, there is nothing to see, so it doesn't even matter if you're blind." I read a bunch of other reviews. People loved this book as see lots of glorious things in it. None of the stories particularly struck me, and taken together they were just sort of bleak and depressing.
sunforsavannah's review
4.0
In her collection of eight short stories, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, Amy Bloom tackles the often disregarded, often taboo imperfections of middle-age life. Though every story is either outright devastating or minimally melancholy, Bloom brings her readers through the motions of loss and revival (which in the writing turn out to become one in the same), shame and guilt, nostalgia and fear. Bloom is able to master the most difficult aspect of writing short stories: the meticulous crafting of characters in a short amount of a time in such a way that readers respond wholeheartedly to their every move and hang on their every word. I fell in love with these characters eight times over. Often times I was so heartbroken for the story to end that I was desperate for a full-length novel where Bloom's characters could continue to evolve and work through their issues. Other times, though, I was content in the quiet, shortlived simplicity of their very being. Truthfully, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You is a heartbreaking account of the sad realities we all go through come middle-age and beyond. Still being a teenager, I've been provided insight on the rough road ahead; and yet I don't feel scared. I feel hopeful.
coralrose's review
3.0
Amy Bloom. I have never read anything of hers before. I mean, I worked at a bookstore at the height of her Away's popularity, but I never did much more than crack the cover and read the book jacket. So why I chose this collection (A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You) of her short stories to start with, I'm not entirely sure. The first story is about a mother's love extending to her daughter as the girl becomes her son. I had just finished this when someone (at a gathering of J's family) asked me what I was reading and if I liked it. I wasn't sure what to say to a woman whose favorite books include all of Dan Brown's novels. I said I wasn't sure.
I kept reading. The dark family secret that divides a family and drives a stepson and his stepmother to quietly struggle through quiet family moments. The mistress unsure what to do with her dying lover's family. The mourning mother struggling to love the most unloveable child she can find. Such twisted, unhealthy, subnormal love, written with such beautiful sentences. I didn't know whether I loved or hated it I felt so disturbed. (Can no one with within healthy boundaries?)
But.
The last story. Not really a story so much as the deconstruction of a story. The deconstruction of a story into bits and pieces so believable I just looked Amy Bloom up online to see if that was actually her story. That story was worth the whole book. Let me see if I can explain.
The very first image Bloom gives us in Story is that of the declining house market. She describes how the homeowners for sale signs become more and more desperate, more blunt, and then she says "I have thought that I could buy that house." The narrator is talking about the house that no one wants, whose owners are desperate to have off their hands...and then she tells us a pretty story about how she would live in that house no one wanted. Then we are told a story about a neighbor couple and their daughter, which she revises, taking out all the pretty details, and then revises further, adding grotesque features to both their marriage and her place in its demise. When the story finishes, we find "Amy" the narrator who is but isn't Bloom herself, living in that house [marriage:] that she perceived as unwanted, even though she had to reduce it to its most desperate to make room for herself in it.
It's a terrible image. An awful, uncomfortable story. But SO beautifully written, with lines like this:
There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.
I don't know. I both wanted to give this book five stars and one star. I think I'll go read something happy now.
I kept reading. The dark family secret that divides a family and drives a stepson and his stepmother to quietly struggle through quiet family moments. The mistress unsure what to do with her dying lover's family. The mourning mother struggling to love the most unloveable child she can find. Such twisted, unhealthy, subnormal love, written with such beautiful sentences. I didn't know whether I loved or hated it I felt so disturbed. (Can no one with within healthy boundaries?)
But.
The last story. Not really a story so much as the deconstruction of a story. The deconstruction of a story into bits and pieces so believable I just looked Amy Bloom up online to see if that was actually her story. That story was worth the whole book. Let me see if I can explain.
The very first image Bloom gives us in Story is that of the declining house market. She describes how the homeowners for sale signs become more and more desperate, more blunt, and then she says "I have thought that I could buy that house." The narrator is talking about the house that no one wants, whose owners are desperate to have off their hands...and then she tells us a pretty story about how she would live in that house no one wanted. Then we are told a story about a neighbor couple and their daughter, which she revises, taking out all the pretty details, and then revises further, adding grotesque features to both their marriage and her place in its demise. When the story finishes, we find "Amy" the narrator who is but isn't Bloom herself, living in that house [marriage:] that she perceived as unwanted, even though she had to reduce it to its most desperate to make room for herself in it.
It's a terrible image. An awful, uncomfortable story. But SO beautifully written, with lines like this:
There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.
I don't know. I both wanted to give this book five stars and one star. I think I'll go read something happy now.
ahsimlibrarian's review
4.0
A patron described her love of an Amy Bloom story to me a few months back. While describing it, you could tell that the story had really meant something to her, that the language had sung. After that I decided to work though my silly aversion to short story collections and give Bloom a try. Now I'm a convert.
Bloom has a visceral style all her own. The title story is about a mother and her son who are spending time together before he gets a sex change operation to physically become a man. The mother recounts how her daughter always knew that she was given the wrong body. Her love of her son, her acceptance and support are heartbreaking. Another story that struck a chord with me was "Stars At Elbow and Foot" which is about a woman who had a stillborn child. It was difficult to read, because it brought me back to the moments after my son was born, when he was being intubated and we waited for his first cry. Bloom captures wonderfully the anger and heartbreak.
More Bloom for me soon!
Bloom has a visceral style all her own. The title story is about a mother and her son who are spending time together before he gets a sex change operation to physically become a man. The mother recounts how her daughter always knew that she was given the wrong body. Her love of her son, her acceptance and support are heartbreaking. Another story that struck a chord with me was "Stars At Elbow and Foot" which is about a woman who had a stillborn child. It was difficult to read, because it brought me back to the moments after my son was born, when he was being intubated and we waited for his first cry. Bloom captures wonderfully the anger and heartbreak.
More Bloom for me soon!
limeade17's review
3.0
Some of these were five star stories and some of them fell flat. Enjoyed reading Amy Bloom for the first time.
innatejames's review
4.0
A short story collection. My favorites stories were the two about the characters Julia and Lionel, the step-mother and son who sleep together after her husband/his father dies. Really complicated stuff. All of these stories have complicated cores that are described very simply, if that makes sense. Like the lesbian who considers a relationship with her friend’s husband as the friend is going through chemo. Reading Amy Bloom’s style very much helped me see how sentences whose purpose is solely description can fit into a heavy plot.
arnie's review
5.0
This is one of my favorite short story collections. I read it over 15 years ago and just reread them. The protagonist in most of the stories is a middle-age woman. Perhaps my two favorites stories are the one in which a mother accompanies her daughter to the hospital where she undergoes a sex-change operation, and the one, a continuation of a story in her collection, "Come to Me," in which her adopted, adult son, who many years ago (in the previous story) had sex with her one night after his father died, comes to visit for Thanksgiving. These are stories about love, all different kinds.