Book Review: Where the God of Love Hangs Out

Published on Friday 5 March 2010 18:03

Where the God of Love Hangs Out By Amy Bloom Granta, 208pp, £10.99

THEY travel to St Kitts for winter breaks and to Florence for their 20th wedding anniversaries. They play CDs of Joan Sutherland in their car radios. When crises arise they take to bourbon in the mid-afternoon and snack on olive tapenade. Rome's air pollution is a likely subject of conversation over their dinners, which might feature gnocchi in basil cream sauce and radicchio and orange salad, washed down with a St-Amour Beaujolais. They read the Economist and go to psychiatrists who subscribe to Paris-Match. Readily dropping foreign phrases, they flatter a woman by saying that she looks like a Balthus or that she has a lot of chien.

Which is to say that most of the characters in Amy Bloom's fictions are exceedingly cosmopolitan and worldly-wise. In her latest, erotically charged, highly explicit collection of short stories, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, they also think and speak in a cheeky if not impudent manner. "You come to my house and I'll shoot you myself," a daughter says to her difficult mother. An ageing man, recalling the loves of his early youth, describes one as "a big, bushy-haired girl with thighs like Smithfield hams", another as "an Egyptian ballerina whose kohl ran onto his linen sport coat". "Your prostate alone's enough to scare her off", a fellow advises a friend whose marriage has grown precarious. "You gotta get a guest room just to keep it somewhere."

This upbeat sassiness of tone is one of the many treasures of Bloom's new collection, which differs markedly from her previous ones (Come to Me, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You). It includes two sets of linked narratives, each consisting of four stories, as well as several free-standing ones. The central figures in the first quartet are William and Clare, both professors, who have become lovers. There are many ailments throughout the book: the gentlemanly but alarmingly overweight William has serious cardiac problems and gout. Clare, who "holds her liquor like an old Swede" and is described by William as having a "squinty, unyielding nature", has a badly sprained ankle and worries that she and William will soon be "looking up positions for the disabled in the sex books". Clare's husband and William's wife are faintly suspicious; but the marital attitudes in these stories reflect the couples' sexual nonchalance, and the spouses feign indifference.

Clare and William eventually divorce and marry each other. Funerals are common in this book: William soon dies, which causes Clare to drink far too much. "Serious drinking and grieving", a phrase that occurs in Come to Me, might well be the central theme of Where the God of Love Hangs Out.

The book's second quartet features Lionel Sampson, an African-American lawyer whose father, also named Lionel, was a famous jazz musician, and his white stepmother, Julia. Julia, a jazz critic, has taken care of Lionel Jnr since he was young and loves him as deeply as she does Buster, the son she had with Lionel Snr. The pivotal event in this set of stories is a night of love shared by Julia and her stepson, then 19, shortly after Lionel Snr's death. Soon after, Lionel moves to Paris, and eventually enjoys a brilliant career as a maritime lawyer. The episode torments Julia, who reflects that she must try "to figure out how to save us both".

The stories' divorce-driven accumulation of wives, of children from several broods, creates some confusion. Writing a good story, after all, is not unlike holding a good dinner party. The fare should be succulent, but the seating should be planned with care: diners should be properly introduced, and attention should be given to the way they might relate to one another. Bloom has no chance of plumping out her characters in the densely populated scenarios of her last chapters. And trudging through them can be like sitting down at a table with a dozen guests one knows very little about.

But this flaw does not deter from the book's saucy vitality. Bloom, who is also a psychotherapist, vividly chronicles the inner lives of people caught in emotional and physical constraints – illnesses they are striving to survive, regrets they are trying to allay, desires they dare not fulfil. She writes in beautifully wrought prose, with spunky humour and a flair for delectably eccentric details. Her narrative talents include a fine touch with flashbacks, which she handles as suavely as any writer I can think of. Her gift for dialogue is equally terrific. Here is Lionel instructing 15-year-old Buster about the facts of life:

"You want to be the kind of man women beg for sex. ... don't slobber. You're not a washcloth. You. Are. A. Lover."

Brava, Ms Bloom. Send us an equally sly, dashing book very soon, please.