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What We're Reading:
Current Picks
from
the Watermark Staff
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Sarah Bagby's book reviews can be heard on
alternate Mondays on KMUW 89.1.
Here's a transcript of her most recent review. To listen, go to
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/national/local-national-633878.mp3
"Away" by Amy Bloom (Random House, ISBN 9781400063567, $23.95)
If you asked for a novel with a woman's touch, a mother's love, and with the
need to survive in desperate circumstances while still keeping house, a novelist
might deliver, say, a Harlequin romance, or a "domestic" woman's novel. Or, if
you're Amy Bloom you'd write an extreme action adventure. Bloom's new novel,
"Away" begins in New York City during the 20s where Lillian Leyb finds herself
after her family is murdered in a pogrom in her native Russia.
When Lillian learns her daughter is alive, she is off on a journey through
Seattle's Jazz District, then Alaska, en route to Siberia. Bloom weaves in
detail and makes plausible odd coincidence and possibility while revealing the
bawdiness and danger of the US Western Expansion.
An amazing novel by a master short story writer, Amy Bloom's "Away" takes
readers into the depths of the human heart as its resolute character crosses
landscapes as vast as any our minds could conceive.
Review by Sarah Bagby October 11, 2007
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