Away: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Amy Bloom
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  95 reviews
Sales Rank: 13300
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 1400063566
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400063567
ASIN: 1400063566
Publication Date: August 21, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: We ship daily! All orders ship out within 2 business days from OR. Your satisfaction is guaranteed!, corners have small damage,missing cover jacket,
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Product Description
Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 90 more reviews...
 Away by Amy Bloom July 24, 2008
This was a very easy read and I did not want it to end. Very good book, would recommend to anyone who likes to read.
Good but not great July 22, 2008
First, I assume some of the other reviewers understood the ending, which I am not sure I did. I thought I did until the last 2 sentences. Anyway, I disagree that her actions make no sense, any mother should be able to understand her desire to find her daughter, no matter the obstacles. However, I agree that the book starts off great and kind of loses its appeal. I am not usually shy about giving up on a book if I don't like it but in this case I did finish because I wanted to know what happened in the end. If you get the copy with the reader's club guide, I wouldn't read it in advance as it gives away some of the ending...as do some of the reviews here.
Away July 21, 2008
A couldn't-put-it-down novel about a courageous, committed woman who travels to the ends of the earth in search of her daughter. Her character is very finely drawn and pulls you into her life. A tour de force.
Disappointing, but had potential July 21, 2008
This book began with a lot of potential, however, I only kept reading it because I wanted to find out what happened at the end, and was unable to figure that out simply by turning to the last page of the book! The storyline was flimsy, although the plot was good, but I just felt there were too many loose ends that were quickly tied together at the end of a chapter. I'm glad I got this book from the library and didn't actually buy it!
Gritty And Poignant July 8, 2008
This is a quest novel with a difference. Like Brecht, Amy Bloom has provided a constructivist montage which captures a time and an experience in memorial fashion.
Lillian Leyb has survived the worst of horrors in Europe--the loss of her entire family, murdered in a pogrom by people they formerly considered neighbors. In the space of minutes, the 22-year-old Lillian becomes an orphan, a widow and the mother of a dead child. In response to a letter from a cousin she's never met Lillian sells what little there is left of her homestead and sails for New York in 1924 "...wearing a dead woman's coat, holding a dead man's leather bag" in search of Opportunity.
She soon discovers all is not sweetness and light. Like emigrants then (and now) she soon discovers going from one place to another does not necessarily make life perfect. The tenements are crowded. There are rats and noise and dirt. There is fierce competition for jobs. There is a new language to learn. There is prejudice. There is never enough money for all that is required in the new life.
Lillian's father had told her smart is good, pretty is useful but lucky is better than both. He also told her "You make your own luck." She believes that. She also believes in Opportunity. She outsmarts another girl to win a seamstress job. She woos a handsome actor who installs her in an apartment as his mistress only to learn he is gay and it is his father whose mistress she will be. Still, life is better and she accepts the arrangement.
Then a newly arrived relative informs Lillian her daughter is not dead but was rescued and taken to Siberia by another family.
Shaken, Lillian begins another quest to retrieve her daughter, crossing the country, going up to the Yukon, buying a boat and attempting to sail across the Bering Strait. Some have found this segment unrealistic. But I don't think so. Wouldn't most mothers go to any lengths to reunite with a lost child?
In addition to Lillian, who is a memorable, admirable character in her own right, there are a host of other wonderful characters in this novel. The Bursteins, father and son; Yaakov Shimmelman, whose friendship with Lillian restores purpose to his life for a time; the prostitute, Gumdrop, and her pimp, Snooky Salt; Chinky Chang, the grifter who also believes in Opportunity, among others.
This is a gritty, funny and poignant book and well worth the read.
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