Lucky Us (Review by AmberBug)

Lucky Us Amy Bloom 3.5/5	Published July 29, 2014 First Sentence "My father's wife died."
Publisher's Description: "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" by The New York Times. Brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny, Lucky Us introduces us to Eva and Iris. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star, and Eva, the sidekick, journey across 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris's ambitions take them from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine through 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. 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.
Dear Reader, Before you read my review, check out the insightful one Arianna posted a few weeks back. I don't have as many great ideas brewing in my head for this review, not sure why since I really liked the book. I do want to mention that I ADORE the cover, it speaks to the characters of the book so well and it looks kinda quirky and fun while the underlying message isn't that at all. Lucky Us is a story that weaves between the lives of two half sisters. Iris comes from a wealthier mother who rears her up to have absolute self confidence and over grandiose ideas on where her life should lead. Eva was the daughter left behind with her destitute mother, she gets "returned" to her father who is now shacking up with the mother of Iris. Neither girl loves their family and the pair share a strange bond, mostly strung together by Iris who takes the girl in as her confident for her big life plans. Eva doesn't seem to mind being the drag along and willingly follows Iris into disaster after disaster. Thinking back on this book, I keep playing the "Oh, the places you will go" phrase, over and over in my mind. I think I loved the bouncing Iris so much because she brought us into these areas of the world I would never have experienced myself. I love reading from the perspective of someone SO different from the way I am. Even though she is abundantly indulgent and full of herself, she still has this warm heart that doesn't forget the little people in her life. The relationship between the two of them is unusual but also slightly comforting in a dysfunctional way. Eva gets to see Hollywood and attend fancy shindigs due to her sisters fame. I have to say, I have a sweet spot for old fashioned Hollywood, there is something romantic and tragic there that keeps me wanting more. We also get thrown out of that world and into NYC, not the glamour of the bright lights but the gritty and honest streets of Brooklyn. As the environment changes, so do the characters and events. Gone is the glitz and glam and to replace it, we have hardship and struggle which is such a stark contrast to the Hollywood chapters. I love that Amy Bloom brings us from here to there with a flick of her wrist (or what I imagine her writing process would look like). I have a feeling this book is going to be welcomed with wide arms, maybe even a little jazz hand action?! Amy Bloom has this way of captivating the reader and I think she has accomplished this yet again, I'm pretty sure all her fans will be gobbling this up without disappointment. I like Amy Bloom, I think she is a solid writer with great stories to tell but I don't see a huge difference between her and many of the other literary writers I read every year and like. I guess I'm not a "Bloom" fan girl, but will that stop me from reading her books? No way! Don't get me wrong, I respect her writing and books very much and I KNOW she is totally worth the read. Be prepared for another successful developed story that has "I want to meet them" characters. You really can't go wrong with Amy Bloom, I can pretty much promise you won't "hate" it but I'm hoping you enjoy it as much as I did. Happy Reading, AmberBug

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Left: Hardcover - Right: E-Book

Lucky Us

Lucky Us Amy Bloom 4 / 5	Published July 29, 2014 First Sentence "My father's wife died."
Publisher's Description: "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" by The New York Times. Brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny, Lucky Us introduces us to Eva and Iris. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star, and Eva, the sidekick, journey across 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris's ambitions take them from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine through 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. 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.
Dear Reader, Bravo, Amy Bloom.  Another great novel.  I really enjoyed Away several years ago, and had hoped for another great period piece; the author did not disappoint.  This time, the story focused on two half-sisters who first meet when they are in their teens, just around the time of the second World War.  Iris is flamboyant and always wants to be center stage, while Eva often plays backup to and supports her older sister in her adventures.  The girls quickly escape their boring lives in Ohio to flee to Hollywood, where Iris makes it (pretty) big, only to fairly quickly tumble from grace.  From that disappointment, the story moves back to New York City, with the girls picking up an entourage which includes Iris' gay stylist, the girls' estranged father, and a pair of spinster hairdresser sisters (among, ultimately, many others).  Despite not having much lasting contact with most of the characters, the reader is still able to care for the entire cast, which to my mind takes enormous skill on the part of the author. The book moved interestingly along; it flipped between Eva's first-person narrative, some epistolary chapters contributed by Iris and Gus (an accused German spy), and some third-person perspectives that allowed the reader to watch some of the secondary characters move through their lives, separately from their relationship with Eva.  But Eva really was the main character, despite the backup role she often played to others, in her own life.  She was the sister with the heart, the one who attracted people to her with her kindness and caring and love.  In her quiet and unassuming way, she was the one who really played the central role in many's lives.  I found especially interesting her relationship with Danny, the orphan boy whom Iris and Eva "adopted" by stealing from an asylum.  Originally, Danny was intended to be Iris' child, but she easily abandoned him when her own life fell apart, and there again was Eva to pick up the pieces, to be the true backbone of the family.  It was interesting to watch the sisters together, and examine their roles. Some parts of the book I felt digressed from the story and could have probably been cut from the final piece with no loss, but they were interesting sidebars and I suppose they did help to flesh out the characters' lives.  Bloom, being originally a short story writer, clearly still has that talent, of sharing whole slices of life in short flashes.  But it works well for this book, particularly in the way that it is constructed. As usual, I look forward to more from Amy Bloom. Yours, Arianna

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The Two Hotel Francforts

The Two Hotel Francforts David Leavitt 3.5 / 5	Published 2013 First Sentence "We met the Frelengs in Lisbon, at the Café‚‚ Suiça."
Publisher's Description: It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon, Portugal, is the only neutral port left in Europe—a city filled with spies, crowned heads, and refugees of every nationality, tipping back absinthe to while away the time until their escape. Awaiting safe passage to New York on the SS Manhattan, two couples meet: Pete and Julia Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward and Iris Freleng, sophisticated, independently wealthy, bohemian, and beset by the social and sexual anxieties of their class. As Portugal’s neutrality, and the world’s future, hang in the balance, the hidden threads in the lives of these four characters—Julia’s status as a Jew, Pete and Edward’s improbable affair, Iris’s increasingly desperate efforts to save her tenuous marriage—begin to come loose. This journey will change their lives irrevocably, as Europe sinks into war. Gorgeously written, sexually and politically charged, David Leavitt’s long-awaited new novel is an extraordinary work.
Dear Reader, I got this book as a Netgalley offering a while back, and had entirely forgotten how the little blurb described it.  So I again went in cold, and I find I really enjoy those books about which I have very little expectation!  The story centers around a couple of weeks relatively early in World War II, when residents from all over Europe were attempting to flee the continent and the Nazi persecution.  Many ended up in Lisbon, as Portugal was neutral at the time, and there was a port where boats could bring people to America or several other far-flung parts of the globe.  (Surprisingly, there was also a World's Fair happening there at the time, which I would have thought would have been postponed due to the growing conflict in nearby countries.)    Two couples meet accidentally while at a cafe, waiting on the boat to America to arrive.  One of them is a couple of American expatriates who had vowed never to go back to the States after they had moved to Paris many years earlier.  The other couple was a mystery-writing team, famous for their British novels written under a pseudonym.  They meet due to an accident involving broken glasses, and begin their adventures together largely due to their both being bored  out of their minds during this "holding pattern" they are forced into.  The couples are particularly tired of their own partners, having traveled through very trying times (and many years before) with each other, so they pair off by gender and have themselves quite a bit of fun.  For a while, anyway.  The closer the date of the ship's arrival, the tenser things get, and things come to a head right around the time the ship is pulling into port.  I don't want to give too much away, but this did recall to me a bit of The Great Gatsby, with its sparkling environs and the posh characters that all swirled around each other, privileged and bored and unhappy all in their own way (to brazenly misquote Tolstoy).  There also definitely lurked something more sinister behind everyone's facade, and those secrets spilled out over the course of the book, culminating in a partly-surprising ending (it was, after all, hinted at right from the start!).  What I found pleasantly surprising was that the part the reader thought would be the denouement of the novel ended up being passed over in a cursory manner, while the author then went on in the epilogue to explain pretty much all of the meat of all the characters' back-stories.  Oddly done, but well done, I do think.  Yours, Arianna

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