Bloom ’75 Publishes New Story Collection

Acclaimed author Amy Bloom ’75 has published a new story collection, Where the Love of God Hangs Out (Random House), which has already received several fine reviews.

The book contains two sets of four related stories and four unrelated works in which the author explores love, loss, mortality, and other human predicaments with compassion and humor. The first quartet of stories concerns the love affair between middle-aged friends William and Clare who are married to others. The other set of interlocking tales explores the relationship over 30 years between Julia and her stepson Lionel who are introduced in the story “Sleepwalking” as they mourn the death of Lionel’s jazz musician father.

In her review of the book in The New York Times, Janet Maslin writes: “Ms. Bloom, who has worked as a psychotherapist as well as a creative writing professor, clearly has great gifts in both those realms. … She writes about characters who are stunning in their verisimilitude but never really predictable in their behavior … Ms. Bloom’s characters are uncommonly fully formed, seldom young, some of them well into old age. Yet they sustain the ability to surprise one another — and themselves.”

Bloom has previously published two story collections, a novel, and a book of essays, and she also created the Lifetime series, State of Mind. Her last book, the novel Away, was a New York Times best seller.