Away [ペーパーバック]

Amy Bloom's first novel for eight years revitalises the American road trip novel, from the perspective of a vulnerable but spirited woman. It paints a vivid, earthy and surprising picture of 1920s America, its smells and textures, its population of drifters and con artists, pimps and prostitutes. "Away" is storytelling at its finest - epic in sweep, but intimate and psychologically acute, moving but unsentimental. Like the novels of Sarah Waters, it is both richly authentic in its period detail, and fresh and contemporary in its style. But above all Bloom has created an unforgettable character in Lillian Leyb - her voice, haunted, damaged yet innocent, passionate, witty and unpretentious, is so believable and strong that her presence lingers long after the novel ends.

Rosenblat, who has narrated hundreds of books over the past 15 years, has a deep, clear, engaging voice and a mastery of cadence and inflection that projects wit and nuanced meaning. Rosenblat is renowned for her proficiency with accentsan important skill for Bloom's fifth novel, which includes all sorts of wonderfully complex human beings: Reuben and Meyer Burstein, scions of the 1920s Lower East Side Yiddish theater; Midwestern WASPS; and Seattle's colored lumpen. Lillian Leyb, a 22-year-old Yiddish-speaking immigrant whose parents and husband were brutally slaughtered during a Russian pogrom, is searching for her missing three-year-old daughter, Sophie. In New York, Lillian hears that Sophie has been seen with a family in Siberia. With her dictionary, thesaurus and a map, she sets out on her journey across America. Bloom's graphic, often witty and erotic descriptions of Lillian's adventures include a blow job exchanged for a free ride in the broom closet of a train; her odd friendship with Gumdrop, a colored prostitute whose pimp they accidentally murder; and, finally, her moving redemption through care and love. Away is a remarkable saga best experienced through Rosenblat's masterly interpretation.
Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

Amy Bloom is the author of two collections of stories, Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, a novel, Love Invents Us, and a non-fiction book, Normal. A practising psychotherapist, Bloom teaches creative writing at Yale University