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 … 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
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I am reading it now and I’m very near the end, but….I think it is a convoluted tale …even though the letters from Gus were very telling about the World War II in the German prisoner of war camp….otherwise I was often unsure who was writing the letters until the signature. I will not recommend this book to others. All I can say is ‘it is strange.’
At it’s most basic level, Lucky Us is the story of two half sisters, Iris and Eva, who meet as adolescents in the midst of rather awkward circumstances. Iris’s mother has just died and Eva’s has left her abruptly with her father, Edgar. With World War II as a backdrop, Iris and Eva hightail it out of Ohio and away from Edgar and to Hollywood where Iris’s fate is heartbreak and disillusionment.
This is a book that starts a bit slowly, and is told through letters – both sent and unsent – memories, and multiple perspectives. For that reason, the story itself sometimes feels a bit disjointed, sometimes flowing smoothly and sometimes moving in fits and starts. Even so, it is a beautifully written story. Amy Bloom has created an entire cast of memorable characters, each with their own personalities, quirks, and, perhaps most importantly, flaws. And she has done this using some of the most beautiful prose I have read in a long time.
“The wicked people of the world are not supposed to be calm and composed,” Eva muses at one point, and with that one sentence I am transported into my own musings on wickedness and human nature. When Clara tries to help Eva understand her aversion to religion, Bloom writes, “she absolutely did not believe that a white man was going to come back from his own lynching to help out Clara Williams or take her hand or be her friend.” These are words that reach into the reader’s mind, create strong imagery, and pull the story – and the reader – along.
None of the characters is who they seem initially and all make questionable decisions. I was reminded more than once of When the World Was Young (another mid-century historical fiction which sees a young girl settle into life without her mother). And while Lucky Us is a coming of a age story, I would argue that it is really about decisions and consequences, the shades of gray surrounding “truth,” the meaning of family – those we are born to and those we choose, and not least what it means to forgive – or not.
(This review was originally published at https://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2016/07/lucky-us.html)
Didn’t finish and I rarely say that about a book.
Gloomy book with little in the way of heartfelt character development.
It was ok
Not really my kind of book
I loved the characters and how they come full circle. It was a great read!
The book had some interesting characters, but the plot is not it’s strong point (or, equally possible, I missed the point). Worth reading to the end though the Middle makes it hard to reach
I couldn’t get my not it. Not my type of book I guess.
Didn’t finish it.
the story jumped back and forth between sisters and the timeline became disjointed, At times it didn’t make sense.
Loved the characters and all those they meet are the things they went through. Interesting about what happened to some German Americans in WWII.
Just couldn’t get in to this one.
Didn’t finish it!
So well written it was a joy to read
An inspiring and unusual story, well sritten,fromdiffernt charesters perspctives and their letters.
A beach book.
I did not like anything about this book.
While I found the characters in the book interesting at some point they all tended to get less interesting and I cared less about them as the novel went on. They had no verve to their lives so it made them predictable and boring. While the author’s writing style is quite good keeping the reader engaged turned out to be a challenge in my case.
Not an interesting book to me, possibly because I am male and could not relate to the characters.