"Where the God of Love Hangs Out"

Unlike much tediously predictable contemporary fiction, Amy Bloom's new short story collection, "Where the God of Love Hangs Out" (Random House, 2010) never stopped surprising me from beginning to end. Such originality is bracingly refreshing, and I savored every minute of reading this collection. Bloom, a psychotherapist, presents us with unique, intriguing characters and situations. Her stories explore family, love, divorce, illness, race, and much more, but never in a familiar way; there are always twists. There are twelve stories in the book, every one of them compelling, but the most riveting are two linked sets of four stories each. The first set, "William and Clare," focuses on two longtime friends who in middle age become lovers and eventually divorce their spouses to marry. One of the things I value about this set of stories is the way Bloom shows that the love of older people can be just as deeply passionate as that of the young. The other set of stories, "Lionel and Julia," revolves around the kind of ad hoc, complicated family that is becoming so common these days: a cobbled-together unit composed of ex-spouses, stepchildren, and half-siblings, no less close for being unconventional (very unconventional, in one case in particular). In many of the stories, there is unorthodox, even reprehensible behavior, but one of Bloom's strengths is her power to make readers suspend our usual moral judgments because of our connections to the specific, very human characters involved. We can't help becoming entangled with, empathizing with, and even falling in love with some of the characters, despite their messy lives.