Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction Audiobook

" So, the thing that catches your attention here is to try to get in the mindset of the outcast American that you don't know is an outcast in the 21st century. Lives of normal people where some of underbelly is somehow more exposed in a loving sort of way. "

" Truthfully, I didn't always understand the connections between a couple of the stories and it took me a while to remember the characters, but this is one of the drawbacks of an audio book...no flipping back to review! Bloom does flesh out her characters well, tells a good story, well, several in this case, and throws in a few curves to make it interesting. "

" Finished this on a trip to Sydney recently - the trip wasn't much fun so it was nice to be able to come back to Bloomland at the end of a long jetlagged day. She gets criticized for being 'stylistic' - but she has great style and writes the kind of prose where you want to go back and see "how did she do that again?". It may be 'tricksy' - but it's great tricksy and tremendously humane. You read her and you know instinctively would like to spend time with her. "

" Why do good writers have to sink into depravity? "

" I would definitely read Amy Bloom's work again. I love her narrative restraint and her psychological and social insights into characters; these two (an ability to "show, not tell" matched with having something worth telling) make her stories engrossing. I particularly loved the opening "quartet" (that's how Bloom referred to her interlacing short stories in the interview at the end of the edition I read) when she explores the growing relationship between two middle-aged friends whose lives are intertwined and whose romance complicates those other connections. The love between William and Clare was poignant, messy, sexy, and real (not necessarily in that order and not necessarily all at once). A thread of loss runs through this book, and that is where I found it the most powerful, when it examines the beauty of love in a life and the necessity of loss that renders that love both excruciating and indelible, even as all things change and all people pass from this earth. Those meditations (carried on indirectly and sparely, as is Bloom's wont) were quite moving. So why am I giving the collection three stars rather than four stars or five stars? The second quartet about Julia and Lionel (an interracial couple with a complicated family) ended up rambling a bit and ultimately felt more soap-opera-y to me than vivid and real. I thought the first half of the collection was more taut and understated. There came a point in the Julia and Lionel quartet when the narration was catching me up on the domestic lives of the characters (the next generation after Julia and Lionel), and I could almost hear a voice-over saying "Last week, on 'Julia and Lionel: The Next Generation'..." Rich characters and poignant stories. Particularly dug the two stand-alone stories about characters who are left out of the grand narratives they witness: one story about a social worker who observes the experiences of a girl with a flesh-eating virus and the other about a roommate who struggles with the loss of her friend through a brutal rape and murder. (Summarizing them makes the soap opera element more apparent than it feels in reading either of those stories, no matter how gothic the circumstances of their unfolding.) "

" Amy Bloom dazzles me. How is she able to do that, create so much in the way or mood or character, so much feeling ... in just one paragraph? She does it gracefully, no sense of showing of, nothing feels contrived, just true and generously told. She just invites us in, includes us in these lives and stories. And her characters make me want that ... to know more about them, about their dreams, about the places their lives tangle. "

" I won this book as part of the FirstReads program, and what luck--I couldn't have chosen a better book to win. Having read a few of Bloom's stories in the past, mostly for school, I was always impressed with her writing, but never actively sought out any of her work. That will change--Bloom's spare use of words to convey actions and emotions is extraordinary, and she is a true master. "

" Three of the short stories in here are repeats from previous books...kind of disappointed. "

" my favorite amy bloom toeot date. she always entertains- but think maybe she is master of short story and these are odd, moving, intense and really, where does the god of love hang out....? "

" I really enjoy Amy Bloom's writing. This was a book of short stories which I don't usually like, but all of the characters were well developed and most of the stories were very believable. "

" This is the Amy Bloom collection I meant to give four stars to...it is Alice Monro-like, it is that good. "

" This was a good easy read "

" I loved this collection of short stories (some were more like novellas). I think I enjoyed every single one. Sped through it and would definitely recommend it. "

" Amy Bloom could write ad copy and I'd love it. "

" As usual, some of the stories in this collection were fantastic. However, overall I was a bit disappointed. I recently finished re-reading "Love Invents Us" and I think maybe my expectations were a little high. Still a great collection but not as good as her others. "

" Very ordinary. "

" Have loved Amy Bloom since all I could find were her columns in Self Magazine and Glamour. However, this one didn't grab me so much. I enjoyed it well enough, but I just liked it, did not love it. "

" Really capitivating short stories. Some of her sentences are so beautiful I had to stop and reread them in appreciation. She writes very convincingly about passion, but it got a little depressiing that it always involved adultery. "

" I didn't enjoy this at all...I don't even know how/why I finished it. Granted, I picked up and put down frequently...may have been better to read straight through... "

" This was an interesting collection of short stories in that it featured several stories about the same characters, so you could see their continuing story. All of the pieces dealt with love in its many forms. I liked it. "

" I heard an interview with Amy Bloom on NPR and had to run out and read this book. Generally, I'm not a huge fan of short stories, but this was a quick and enjoyable read. "

" Loved, loved, loved this book of short stories. Very real people, very real situations and beautifully written. LOVED this book! "

" Interesting characters! "