Contents: Plot Summary Characters Themes Style Critical Overview Criticism Sources Further Reading |
Amy Bloom 1991
Amy Bloom’s first collection of short stories, Come to Me,brought her immediate acclaim. Critics lauded her skill in drawing her characters, many of whom were, as Jeanne Schinto dubbed them in Belles Letters,“psychological anomalies.” Bloom evocatively portrays these disturbed individuals amidst backgrounds rich with love, familial relationships, and essential humanity.
“Silver Water,” one of the stories in the collection, was chosen for inclusion in 1992’s Best American Short Stories. It tells about a teenager, Rose, who has a psychotic break. After ten years of fighting schizophrenia, Rose kills herself. Her struggle with the illness, the unspeakable anguish it brings to her entire family, and her eventual suicide are all hauntingly brought forth through the understated voice of Violet, who narrates her older sister’s life with precise, alive words and luminous imagery. Victoria Radin wrote of the collection in the New Statesman and Society,Bloom’s “stories are suffused with the sensual pleasures of colour, sound, scent, and love.” “Silver Water” radiates with such touches, but its deeper power draws from Bloom’s creation of an immensely painful situation and the love that attempts to conquer it, and yet finally has no choice but to submit to it.
