I'll be right here - released 1st July

I’m a big fan of American writer Amy Bloom’s novels and short stories. They’re witty, tender, lucidly written and character-driven explorations of the complexities of human relationships and individual identity. Bloom is also a trained and practising psychologist and a publicly acknowledged bisexual, whose fiction often focuses on the ways in which sexual diversity can offer unorthodox models of love and the family. 

Her new novel I’ll Be Right Here, due for release in July, is her most ambitious yet. A multi-generational narrative set in Paris, New York and Mexico, its Preface introduces some of the main characters in the contexts of death and love. Gazala, a French Algerian woman, is dying in Manhattan, attended her by her steadfast friends, sisters Anne and Alma, Anne’s wife Honey, and Samir. The Preface also presents what initially appears to be a conventional death-bed scene, but its concluding image – one of Gazala’s childhood memories – subverts convention itself. While she and her brother are engaged in stereotypically gendered pursuits – she is embroidering while he is watching boys kick a football – she also recalls her father engaged in the typical feminine activity of pouring tea. The Preface this prepares us will become a narrative about choosing who we are and who we might become, free of the weight of social expectations.

As well as being set in different locations, all of which are vividly evoked, the novel also moves backwards and forwards in time, from the 1930s to the present day. This fragmented structure enacts one of the main ideas of the novel: that while we live our lives in chronological order, our understanding of who we are is non-linear, impelled by memories, forgotten connections and retrospective revelations. The novel’s plot is thus one of many surprises: a woman falls in love with and marries her husband’s sister; another woman raises a child on her own and joins a throuple (and yes, it’s what it sounds like); friends become lovers. 

While I’ll Be Right Here creates a highly unconventional version of family and sexuality, it also affirms, as its title suggests, a traditional belief in abiding and selfless love. Not that Bloom’s characters are paragons of virtue. This new novel, which combines an expansive plot with the resonance of particular scenes, offers an intelligent, sometimes witty vision of a flawed humanity. Above all, lovers of literary fiction will find the novel a great pleasure to read. It’s a book to savour for the beauty of its prose, and for its clever crafting of unexpected twists and turns in the plot. 

Compassionate and full of warmth and humour, I'll Be Right Here embraces the complexity and richness of humanity and the mysterious ways we evolve as we love - and the ways we hope to be loved in return.