Love Invents Us

This is a beautifully written, poetic story that stays with you long after reading it. For those reviewers who are saying it's about sex more than love, I would recommend you reread the entire book. As you reread, remember how blurred the lines between sex and love were when we were preteens and teenagers. What Amy Bloom does with this book is show us the journey from that blurry, early world of sex and love to the middle-age world of redefined sex and love. This book made me look back through my adolescence and young adulthood with more compassion and acceptance than ever before. A true love story, with all its warts and rainbows.

Love Invents Us is about a girl who was emotionally abandoned by her parents but who does not emotionally abandon others. Like many who are unloved by their parents, Elizabeth Taube reaches out to others; sometimes sexually, sometimes in a caregiver role, and sometimes in a maternal way. The book makes it clear that although Elizabeth didn't have a conventional childhood with loving parents, she took note and appreciated the little things her parents did do, to show what limited love they had. She didn't damn them for it, and in fact ended up taking care of her dying mother, and re-inventing their relationship through that caretaking role. So despite the emotional abandonment by her parents, she still learned to love. That says a lot for her resiliency and strength. And, she had two major adults in her life who sincerely did love her--an elderly ill woman, and her English teacher. Each of these people might have been extremely self-focused and perhaps selfish in their love of her, but they bothered to know her. To notice details about her that her parents didn't notice. And, they spoke to her honestly--they saw through her. The elderly woman knew Elizabeth was stealing from her, and let her know it; the English teacher spoke bluntly to her, as well. They did not shy away from the truth. And as I see it, that is part of what love is. And the same with the love of her life, Huddie--he spoke to her with blunt honesty. There was mention of many hours they spent together, talking, when they were young--about politics, about life in general--and you can see by their dialogue that their intimacy grew not only through their wonderful sexual relationship, but because of the dialogues they had, and because they knew eachothers' faults and still accepted eachother. Even up to the end, they talked to eachother like one's closest friends talk to eachother. It is almost enviable to have had a relationship that close, and not everyone achieves it. In the end, while she is once again abandoned, she is also the abandoner. She realizes that she can stand alone, and that she might even prefer being alone--because she has another vital reason to live; she is a mother. The mother of an extremely unique child, who she swears to protect forever. And her need to protect this child is even stronger than her need to hold onto Luddie. So once again, this shows the enormous strength and ability to love, within her. Yes, she doesn't have a lot of material wealth and she has never achieved to her potential--but given her early childhood experiences, she has done extremely well for herself. I felt proud of her at the end. The title also refers to Elizabeth's mother, who has hidden her past from others by "re-inventing" herself through each man she marries, and making the best of it. And, it refers to the role of mothers in general, who invent themselves through their children, and by virtue of being mothers. The book has left me feeling empty because I want more

While reading "Love Invents Us" and about Elizabeth, I was reminded of several recent movie characters who find themselves in similar situations: Enid in "Ghost Story" and "J" in "My First Mister." Besides all three characters being about the same age, all three also have affairs of a sort with older men, all are rebels, all dress in a style best described as Goth and all three are devastatingly intelligent and colossally misunderstood ("My Mother usually acted as though I had been raised by a responsible, affectionate governess: guilt and love were as foreign to her as butter and sugar."). More importantly all have a deep capacity for love, untapped as it mostly is. Elizabeth Taube, though she complains of not being, is well loved: by Max, a high school teacher who falls compulsively and helplessly for her: "So beautiful, Max thought. Am I supposed to be ashamed for being such a dirty old man, another Humbert, disgusting in my obsession?" By Mrs. Hill a nearly blind elderly woman whom she helps out several times a week and who "sees" Max's attraction to Elizabeth: "You put one hand on that child who thinks you love her fine mind...and I'll see you turning in Hell, listen to you pray for death." and by Huddie a young African American who once his father finds out about the affair, sends Huddie away: "(Huddie was)...a hundred times handsomer than the other handsome boys, kinder than the other sports stars. Even girls he slept with only once had nothing bad to say about him." All of the characters in "Love Invents Us" have to deal with missed chances and miss-connections. Max's wife Greta says: "I did think it would be a happy life. That is what people think. That's why they marry and have children. In anticipation of further joy, of multiplying happiness." To which Max replies: "People like me marry and have children because we are apparently not dead, because we are grateful. Because we wish to become like the others. To experience normal despair and disappointment." Amy Bloom's writing is voluptuous, fat and juicy as befits a novel about the many faces of Love and what we as humans are willing to do to bite off some of it for ourselves. If Love Invents Us, it also feeds us, nourishes us and substantiates our existence.

Amy Bloom's stunning writing made what might have been a depressing story a terrific read. I found her characters not only believable, but sympathetic and fraught with the complicated baggage that makes real people interesting--and at times intolerable, as these characters were. Elizabeth Taube's quest for love begins with the strange fur salesman Mr. Klein and continues through a series of longer-lasting relationships, none of which completely satisfies her--although all of them do, as the title says, invent her. From Mrs. Hill, who teaches her how love through service, to Mr. Stone, her obsessed English teacher, to her parents' disconnected affection, Elizabeth learns about love in the complex forms in which it presents itself to us, and Amy Bloom shows us how Elizabeth learns in elegant prose.

This is a book that throughout the year I have found myself asking others to read. It stayed with me... and you would be doing yourself a favor if you read it.