August 29, 2007
Review: ‘Away’ by Amy Bloom
Lillian Leyb, the main character in Amy Bloom’s new novel, “Away
“We live and we love the world,” Leyb thinks, “and we kid ourselves that the world loves us back.”
She’s only 22. But, such is the sullen resignation of a woman who’s already gone through so much in such a short amount of time. The quiet moments where she can reflect on life are few and far between in this restless novel.
Amy Bloom has written a picturesque book that is sweeping in scale, although it comes in at just 235 pages. As Bloom alludes to in the story, it’s a sort of Russian-Jewish-American version of Ceres’ descent into the Underworld to recover her daughter.
And while the pages are filled with unflinching violence and wanton sexuality, it never overwhelms the reader. Leyb also glimpses love a few times along her journey.
She falls in with a Seattle prostitute who helps her recover from a mugging. Later, at a women’s prison, she grows attached to a Chinese inmate who proves her toughness to everyone by beating up a bully but reveals a sentimental side to Lillian. After her release, Lillian goes on to meet John Bishop, a man on the run from the law who helps her escape the savage north Canadian wilderness by letting her stay at his cabin. Mother Nature can be as cruel as the people in this book.
And yet, the cruelty and violence are not gratuitous. Bloom, a psychotherapist by training, offers us a benefit to these episodes by allowing the reader to look at the thinking behind the actions. Many of the characters who partake in bad acts offer an explanation for why they do what they do.
Early in Lillian’s journey to across America, a railroad worker takes her into a lavatory and forces himself on her sexually as payment for the train ride. Afterward, he wants Lillian to understand that he’s not really a bad guy:
“Red McGann is not a bad man and he wants Lillian to know that, and he wants her to say it, too. He wants that now more than he wanted the other. He wants her to see that he was willing to save her five dollars and that another man would have asked her to rosin the bow and taken her money as well, and he has heard that some of the fellows charge extra for the water and the sandwich, which he does not. He wants Lillian to agree that there are some things you want so much you don’t care about their provenance. It doesn’t matter if they’re stolen or paid for or forced out by pity or fear. It only matters that you get that drink, or that release, or that money, or that baby, and when you are standing on the side of need, in the thick of not having what you must, the trouble that may come later, even the trouble you can guarantee, is of no account. And if Red McGann said that to Lillian, she wouldn’t argue with him.”
It’s an explanation to himself as much as it’s an explanation for her. He wants to believe — and wants her to believe — that his behavior arises from an evil urge. It’s not something he wants to do; it’s something he’s forced to do. There aren’t many characters in this book who would argue with Red’s thoughts.
That’s part of what makes this such a moving novel. We come to realize that motives are paramount and cruelty can always be rationalized in the mind of the perpetrator. We’d be kidding ourselves to think otherwise.
Amy Bloom’s “Away