Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom

My unending thanks goes to Ed Freeman. Not just because he's an awesome guy who I am so grateful to have been in a classrom with at Darden. But because he introduced me to Amy Bloom. The first work of hers that I read is a short story called Love Is Not A Pie and it made me think deeper about how I view love and whether or not I believe there is only one person - one true soul mate if you will - to love and share your life with. I just finished reading her first novel Love Invents Us and it was equally thought provoking and beautifully written. She writes how I want to write. Pairing words to describe her thoughts with such descriptive, vivid, beautiful and brutal truth. Like a stream of purely authentic thoughts that flows from the pit of her being. This passage comes toward the end of the novel and it is one that seemed to resonate with me for one reason or another:

"We're not talking," he said, and he laced his fingers through hers. They both looked down, caught by what always caught them, what captured tem when Huddie put his hand on the bleacher i nthe high school gym, resting the side of his palm so close to her leg that they both felt the soft prickling of the tiny hairs on her thigh. The absolute aesthetic harmony of their skin flared up and then subsided, outshone by the infinite exploding light of what came next, a beauty living only in each other, separate from their attractive, everyday faces, from body parts they liked or didn't like, from the lives they would have. Only their mothers, at the first moment of seeing, had ever read their souls so plain on their faces."

Here's a bit more info on it if you care to take a read of it yourself.

Review From Amazon.com
In this first novel, Amy Bloom spins the tale of one Elizabeth Taube, charting her progress from an unloved adolescent to (alas) an unloved, middle-aged mother. To be sure, Elizabeth has had no shortage of suitors. Yet, one by one, they desert her, leaving nothing but their imprints upon her personality--which, if we are to take the title literally, is almost all the personality we have. The author steers clear of sentimentalizing her heroine's plight. And Bloom's eerie ability to convey physical sensation--which also distinguished her story collection Come to Me--is on ample and impressive display.