Perils of Pauline had nothing on this heroine

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	• Away: A Novel Amy Bloom Random House, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 87 reviews view larger image
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Perils of Pauline had nothing on this heroine

episodic series of adventures starring Lillian the Litvak. From Russia to NewYork across America to Alaska .
Inventive but not gripping or entirely believable.

Funky book

Is unusual not quite realistic storytelling a type of Jewish tale? The events in this book were more plausible then the stories in Everything's Illuminated (man living with a ax in his skull) but a bit odd, very entertaining, which afterall is the purpose a a novel, but stretches the believable. The characters in the story were passing through, even Lillian.
It was fun. Somewhat imaginative.

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Good Start, Horrible Finish

I must first preface this review with an explanation to the three stars I gave it. The first one hundred pages of this novel deserves four; the rest barely two, hence the generous rating of three stars. The beginning of the novel tells the story of Jewish immigrant Lillian, who has left a horrific past in Russia to start fresh in New York City. She manages to finagle a job as a seamstress for a theater company and ends up becoming involved with both the father and son who run it. Amy Bloom crafted this section well, doing a great job describing characters and the struggles a single woman new to this country experiences.

The last 140 pages recounts Lillian's solo journey towards Siberia to find her young daughter, whom she though was dead. It is written in such a way where the author is desperately trying to make it seem realistic to the reader, who in turn should recognize the obvious attempted manipulation taking place. It's extremely unlikely that a young, single, foreign woman could survive begging for cheap train passages, a severe beating on Skid Row, a threesome gone wrong, a woman's jail, trekking miles through the Alaskan wilderness with very little clothing and a map, several encounters with country men, and journeying alone on the Yukon River . I don't have problem with unrealistic fiction, as long as it is done right. This is not.

Bloom's most overused plot device is sex. Sex can be used effectively as a way to develop characters and plot, but unfortunately it is not employed well in Away. Sex is brought into every single new encounter Lillian has during her journey through America. Instead of making Lillian seem like a desperate woman willing to do anything to survive, these exploits end painting a picture of a very promiscuous woman, which I don't think Bloom intended.

Unfortunately, I would not recommend this book to others. The initial prase in received was not warranted.

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Life Is A Matter of Survival

This is not your usual immigrant novel, where the good girl resists all evil and prevails. Lillian does prevail. She arrives in New York in the 1920s, a shell of a woman after witnessing the butchering of her husband and parents and the disappearance of her young daughter. Life is a matter of survival and not much else.

"The two men move through the crowd like gardeners inspecting the flower beds of English estates, like plantation owners on market day. Whatever it is like, Lillian doesn't care. She will be the flower, the slave, the pretty thing or the despised and necessary thing, as long as she is the thing chosen from among the other things..." She is chosen. She is loved by one, used by another, and adored by yet another. Until she hears a rumor that her daughter is alive and living in Siberia. Then the tale becomes picaresque as Lillian leaves New York and heads to Alaska to cross back into Russia.

Amy Bloom is a bard. She sings the song of Lillian, unfolding unexpected episode after unexpected episode. The song is stirring and imaginative. Characters enter briefly and remain behind as Lillian moves on. Reminiscent of E. L. Doctorow, Bloom tells us in delicious paragraphs how these interesting characters play out. Not everyone in this adventure lives happily ever after, but the writing is so captivating that Away is hard to put down.

by Judith Helburn
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York?s Lower East Side, to Seattle?s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom?s work?her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart?come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

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