Starts out very well, but deteriorates as it goes along. It's one of those immigrant Jewish women with a strong will for survival sort of book, wwhich I'm rarely fond of even though I'm a Jewish woman with a strong will for survival. (But I'm not an immigrant) ( )

The first book to read on vacation. A very unusual book. I had to get used to the atmosphere at first, I didn't immediately like it. Later on I liked it better. Not one of my best reads, but I am glad I read it. It two weeks and a couple of books later since I read it, but I still feel the atmosphere of the book when I think back, so it made more of an impression than I had thought.

It's about a young Jewish woman from Russia whose husband, father and mother get killed in a raid. She tries to bring her two-year old daughter to safety. After the tragedy she can't find the little girl and her aunt tells her she saw the girl dead in the river.

That's when she decides to go to America, for a better future. At that point the story turns a bit awkward for me. A bit too unreal for my taste. Even though I believe it is based on a true situation (not all the details though) and even if I believe such things can happen. I can't blame her for the choices she makes. I think I would do what she did given the same circumstances and given the fact that she has nothing whatsoever to lose.

The story turns even more unreal when she decides to go back to Russia and all the adventures she has while trying to reach her goal. Unreal, but fascinating. I think you will just have to judge for yourself by reading the book. I still can't decide what to make of this book. ( )

I chose this book for my book club, and although it had mixed reactions, I loved it. Amy Bloom packs so much into this book without making the reader feel like they are being shortchanged. You can read my detailed review here: http://www.alifeinbooks.com/?p=216 ( )

After witnessing the brutal murders of her family, 22-year-old Lillian Leyb flees her native Russia for New York City, hoping to stop carrying the ghosts of her mother, father, husband and young daughter around her like a shroud. She immediately gets a job working in the Yiddish theatre district with Reuben and Meyer Burstein, a father-and-son team, and finds herself as their mostly willing accomplice until her cousin shows up at her doorstep.

With Raisele's arrival comes big news: her four-year-old daughter Sophie, believed to be murdered, may actually be alive -- and living with a family in a Jewish sector of Siberia. And Lillian begins the cross-country journey that will find her in the arms and hearts of men and women from coast to coast as she makes her way to Seattle, Washington and up the Telegraph Trail of Alaska.

Amy Bloom's Away is one emotional wallop of a novel. Filled to the brim with precise details, graphic imagery and plenty of grief to spread around, this is the story of a young woman's journey to find her lost daughter, the final piece of the sad life she left behind in Russia -- but it's about so much more than that, too. In the back of my paperback version of the novel, Bloom discusses the idea that the novel is about Lillian becoming "American" in the 1920s -- losing her accent, changing her dress, traveling west in the hope of finding freedom from her pain and the possibility of beginning a new life. This is, in fact, an American story -- for all those reasons and more.

I was immediately drawn into life in 1920s New York City, and I felt like I was standing next to Lillian in line as she hoped to be chosen to work for the Bursteins. Her numbness, grief and general ambivalence toward life were a bit off-putting, but I'm sure that was intentional. Until Lillian gets the news from Raisele, she's drifting through life -- here, but not here. Her "adventure," if you can call it that, brings her into the lives of some pretty memorable characters, and I especially loved John Bishop, the man standing sentinel on the Telegraph Trail, and Gumdrop, the classic "hooker with a heart of gold" in Seattle.

The sexual content in the story caught me a little off guard, but I guess it's to be expected of a single woman roaming the country on her own -- and in a time when women were still viewed as objects to be coveted and used. Also be warned of the graphic nature of many of Lillian's recollections, particularly the aftermath of the pogroms in Turov. I am a squeamish reader, and I'll say that they honestly didn't bother me too much -- so don't be too alarmed.

Bloom's writing style is incredibly unique, and there was plenty of foreshadowing happening through the whole novel. She does a superb job of tying up loose ends for characters who appear only fleetingly as Lillian moves on, and I felt an intense sense of closure. Even when the ends weren't positive, it was nice to just know what happened to them. I really appreciated that!

The impetus propelling us forward in Away is the wonder, and the hope, that Lillian will find her little girl. But as in life, it's as much about the journey as it is the destination -- and I was happy to have joined Lillian on that quest. ( )

opening paragraphs:
It is always like this: the best parties are made by people in trouble.
There are one hundred and fifty girls lining the sidewalk outside the Goldman Theatre. They spill into the street and down to the corners and Lillian Leyb, who has spent her first thirty-five days in this country ripping stitches out of navy silk flowers until her hands were dyed blue, thinks that it is like an all-girl Ellis Island: American-looking girls chewing gum, kicking their high heels against the broken pavement, and girls so green they’re still wearing fringed brown shawls over their braided hair. The street is like her village on market day, times a million. A boy playing a harp; a man ….

Lillian Leyb steals your heart and makes it ache as you follow her adventures and disappointments as she makes her way across the country from NYC and into Canada. She's searching for the four yr old daughter she thought was left dead after her Jewish village was ravaged in 1920s Russia.

I was puzzled by all the "green" early in the story--green dress, green curtains, green this and that. Then no green during her horrendous journey across the country, not until, "The light in the woods is a thick, wavering green." Ah ha, green is life and hope. ( )