Lucky Us: A Novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE - Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader's Circle for author chats and more. "My father's wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us." So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called "a literary triumph" (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris's ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn's beauty parlors to London's West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species. Praise for Lucky Us "Lucky Us is a remarkable accomplishment. One waits a long time for a novel of this scope and dimension, replete with surgically drawn characters, a mix of comedy and tragedy that borders on the miraculous, and sentences that should be in a sentence museum. Amy Bloom is a treasure."--Michael Cunningham "Exquisite . . . a short, vibrant book about all kinds of people creating all kinds of serial, improvisatory lives."--The New York Times "Bighearted, rambunctious . . . a bustling tale of American reinvention . . . If America has a Victor Hugo, it is Amy Bloom, whose picaresque novels roam the world, plumb the human heart and send characters into wild roulettes of kismet and calamity."--The Washington Post "Bloom's crisp, delicious prose gives [Lucky Us] the feel of sprawling, brawling life itself. . . . Lucky Us is a sister act, which means a double dose of sauce and naughtiness from the brilliant Amy Bloom."--The Oregonian
"A tasty summer read that will leave you smiling . . . Broken hearts [are] held together by lipstick, wisecracks and the enduring love of sisters."--USA Today "Exquisitely imagined . . . [a] grand adventure."--O: The Oprah Magazine
"Marvelous picaresque entertainment . . . a festival of joy and terror and lust and amazement that resolves itself here, warts and all, in a kind of crystalline Mozartean clarity of vision."--Elle
"A tasty summer read that will leave you smiling . . . Broken hearts [are] held together by lipstick, wisecracks and the enduring love of sisters."--USA Today "Exquisitely imagined . . . [a] grand adventure."--O: The Oprah Magazine
"Marvelous picaresque entertainment . . . a festival of joy and terror and lust and amazement that resolves itself here, warts and all, in a kind of crystalline Mozartean clarity of vision."--Elle
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
I'm really disappointed in this one. I should have known it wasn't going to be a good read when it was immediately available for checkout via my Kindle through the library. Nothing else I want to read is EVER available and I'm on waiting lists that seem they'll never end - that should have been the HUGE RED FLAG!
The book opens with a great line - so full of promise: "My father's wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us."
Excellent - had me hooked from the get-go. And then that's it. The mother deserts her eleven year old daughter with her part time father. His other daughter, Iris, that is sixteen doesn't question this AT ALL even though they seem to live in Suburbia U.S.A. and a random extra daughter showing up on the doorstep might cause the current daughter to at least say, "Hey Dad -you cheated on mom?" And then the father starts stealing money from Iris all the time (even though prior to Eva's arrival he'd only done it once and there is NO justification for his escalating behavior, it just happens) and so they run away to California where Iris is going to make it big one day. By chapter three, or five - I can't recall, Iris is at a huge orgy party and has fallen in love with a woman because she ran her hand up her thigh and played in her panties and at that moment I went - REALLY????? And closed the book. It wasn't just the orgy, although I'm not onboard with overly erotic text and this was stupidly written in my opinion (I've read plenty of sex scenes that were graphic but aptly written and this wasn't one of them, Nora Roberts write good sex, I'm not a prude), it was the total lack of believable progression.
Fiction writing does ask us to suspend some reality, but when you write as real characters I can't suspend everything about my world like I can for Middle Earth. Creating a concrete setting and then splashing through it like a Unicorn doesn't align (or a Narwahl if you prefer).
And again, I'm not alone. Another review comments:
"...I found it boring and manipulative. The characters seemed written to deliberately provoke - but were rapidly sketched with reactions that seemed cliched and unbelievable . The book attempts to create the 1940's, but again, it draws quick pictures without much depth and seems to deliberately try to draw several alternative subcultures - without creating a realistic sense of either the normal or the unusual. Several other reviewers described the author as a great writer. This is the first of her books that I have read, and while she is competent, I would not consider her great or even very good. No phrases or descriptions caused me to stop or to re-read them; none of the characters were deeply drawn; none of the plot lines were particularly rich..."
One of my biggest issues with this book is the Jazz Club of the 1940s? Yes, I know they existed. Yes, I know they didn't end with the 1920s. But if you're going to write with the backdrop of a "jazz age" get it in the right decade.
But in case you'd like to dive into this book, here is a quick summary (This is not my original writing in the summary; it is a reprint of text):
Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.
With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.
The book opens with a great line - so full of promise: "My father's wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us."
Excellent - had me hooked from the get-go. And then that's it. The mother deserts her eleven year old daughter with her part time father. His other daughter, Iris, that is sixteen doesn't question this AT ALL even though they seem to live in Suburbia U.S.A. and a random extra daughter showing up on the doorstep might cause the current daughter to at least say, "Hey Dad -you cheated on mom?" And then the father starts stealing money from Iris all the time (even though prior to Eva's arrival he'd only done it once and there is NO justification for his escalating behavior, it just happens) and so they run away to California where Iris is going to make it big one day. By chapter three, or five - I can't recall, Iris is at a huge orgy party and has fallen in love with a woman because she ran her hand up her thigh and played in her panties and at that moment I went - REALLY????? And closed the book. It wasn't just the orgy, although I'm not onboard with overly erotic text and this was stupidly written in my opinion (I've read plenty of sex scenes that were graphic but aptly written and this wasn't one of them, Nora Roberts write good sex, I'm not a prude), it was the total lack of believable progression.
Fiction writing does ask us to suspend some reality, but when you write as real characters I can't suspend everything about my world like I can for Middle Earth. Creating a concrete setting and then splashing through it like a Unicorn doesn't align (or a Narwahl if you prefer).
And again, I'm not alone. Another review comments:
"...I found it boring and manipulative. The characters seemed written to deliberately provoke - but were rapidly sketched with reactions that seemed cliched and unbelievable . The book attempts to create the 1940's, but again, it draws quick pictures without much depth and seems to deliberately try to draw several alternative subcultures - without creating a realistic sense of either the normal or the unusual. Several other reviewers described the author as a great writer. This is the first of her books that I have read, and while she is competent, I would not consider her great or even very good. No phrases or descriptions caused me to stop or to re-read them; none of the characters were deeply drawn; none of the plot lines were particularly rich..."
One of my biggest issues with this book is the Jazz Club of the 1940s? Yes, I know they existed. Yes, I know they didn't end with the 1920s. But if you're going to write with the backdrop of a "jazz age" get it in the right decade.
But in case you'd like to dive into this book, here is a quick summary (This is not my original writing in the summary; it is a reprint of text):
Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.
With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.
Reading this book felt a little like watching a silent movie: some jerky, indistinct action, interspersed with text that's supposed to illuminate the dialogue you can't hear, but doesn't necessarily help bring the story into focus.
The story begins as Eva's mother takes her to her father's house for the first time, where she meets her half-sister Iris, and is in for some nasty surprises about her father. Eva and Iris escape to Hollywood, where Iris has some initial success in becoming a starlet, before she is black-balled by the industry. Beginning to widen the cast of characters, Eva and Iris move to New York where the bulk of the action takes place. But why do people choose to go with them? Why do others join the little group in New York? Explanation of motivation is sorely lacking in the narrative. Instead, we are asked to accept, for example, that someone with a long and successful career as a make-up artist in Hollywood would just give that up to join two girls he hardly knows on a cross-country trip. Ok, yes, he felt about what happened to Iris, but I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.
I also felt like the narrative followed the wrong character. Eva just isn't very interesting. I'm not sure that I would have found Iris to be all that more compelling, as she comes across as shallow and self-involved, but at least she has agency in her own life. Eva just sort of drifts along, and seems to almost willfully not understand what's going on around her.
And yet, by the end of the book, I understood where the title came from, and what Bloom was trying to do. It was a satisfying ending, if not a satisfying beginning or middle.
The story begins as Eva's mother takes her to her father's house for the first time, where she meets her half-sister Iris, and is in for some nasty surprises about her father. Eva and Iris escape to Hollywood, where Iris has some initial success in becoming a starlet, before she is black-balled by the industry. Beginning to widen the cast of characters, Eva and Iris move to New York where the bulk of the action takes place. But why do people choose to go with them? Why do others join the little group in New York? Explanation of motivation is sorely lacking in the narrative. Instead, we are asked to accept, for example, that someone with a long and successful career as a make-up artist in Hollywood would just give that up to join two girls he hardly knows on a cross-country trip. Ok, yes, he felt about what happened to Iris, but I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.
I also felt like the narrative followed the wrong character. Eva just isn't very interesting. I'm not sure that I would have found Iris to be all that more compelling, as she comes across as shallow and self-involved, but at least she has agency in her own life. Eva just sort of drifts along, and seems to almost willfully not understand what's going on around her.
And yet, by the end of the book, I understood where the title came from, and what Bloom was trying to do. It was a satisfying ending, if not a satisfying beginning or middle.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.