Shirley Kossick
LOVE INVENTS US by Amy Bloom (Picador, R118,00)
THE American writer Amy Bloom’s fine collection of interconnecting short stories, Come to Me (1994), often read like a novel. Love Invents Us, her first novel, often seems like several short stories strung together around the central character, Elizabeth Taube. This impression is strengthened by a series of evocative chapter headings such as “Speak to My Heart”, “The Night is Dark” and “Oh, Do Not Let the World Depart”.
Strongly reminiscent of Susan in the story Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines, Elizabeth is also a plump child who regards herself as an outsider. Unloved and largely unnoticed by her parents, Elizabeth takes love where she can find it. The first person to love her is an elderly furrier who makes her feel attractive by letting her model his expensive wares.
This is a relationship without a future but it sets a pattern for unsuitable and undemanding older lovers. The next to fall for Elizabeth’s adolescent charms – though these are not always apparent to the reader – is Max Stone, her married English teacher. Again the character recalls an earlier incarnation, also called Max, from the short story, Semper Fidelis.
One of the best and most grimly funny chapters is entitled “Peace Like a River” and concerns Elizabeth’s anything-but- peaceful babysitting evening with Stone’s three young sons: “I was the babysitter I’d never had. I was better than Mary Poppins because I didn’t care what kind of people they became, I just wanted to be their favourite; I wanted them to despise other babysitters.”
The evening starts unpromisingly enough with Mrs Stone showing Elizabeth her neurotic paintings – “They hung on the walls like nightmares” – and ends with her finding out rather more than she needs to know about the private life of the Stones. A perfect vignette of a dysfunctional family, the chapter is witty, perceptive and self- contained.
Bloom has a wonderfully vivid turn of phrase and is particularly good at describing emotion. When Elizabeth falls seriously in love with a basketball player, “Love and desire slammed us into each other, giddy and harmlessly wild as bumper cars.” But this ecstatic relationship (for reasons it would spoil the plot to disclose) is not destined to prosper. In fact, as Elizabeth gets older she becomes more and more acquainted with disappointment and loss. Most poignant of all is her loss of Mrs Hill, the elderly black lady she visits and gradually comes to love.
With Elizabeth’s growth of insight and maturity the novel gathers emotional and philosophical momentum, making it a moving and at times profound commentary on the pains and pleasures of growing up.