Strong Fictional Women
Away
by Amy Bloom
(Random House, 2007)
I started my 2010 reading year by going into my bookpile and reading Amy Bloom's last novel (to help me prepare for my revlew of her current fiction release). Forgive the pun, but I was blown away. I was reminded of all the reasons I loved A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You from all those years ago -- the wit, the surprises. But this time, it was Away's main character, Lillian Leyb, who caught my attention. This early twentieth century girl is strong, without being a bitch. She is soft, without being sentimental and sappy. And best of all, she treks across the United States and Canada spurred on by the fervent belief that she can make it back to Russia and find the daughter who she had thought died the night that the Russians murdered the rest of her Jewish family, only to discover she'd been saved by a neighbor and whisked off to Siberia. Lillian's quest calls on her to muster all her strength, cleverness and determination and makes her one of the most memorable strong fictional women characters I've read in a long time. You see, I've been on my own quest to find just such characters as Lillian, ever since I read Serena by Ron Rash last year and found myself hating its strong bitchy female character. Must bitchiness always accompany strong women? Definitely not. Read Away and fall in love with Lillian -- she's strong of heart and mind and carries this book straight into the unforgettable.
Here's a passage about Lillian hailing her first taxi in Chicago.
"Lillian has ridden in taxicabs with Reuben and with Meyer. She puts her hand up, too, palm out, with the Bursteins' grand sweep, and she lifts her chin like they do, and the cab stops in front of the dirty girl in heavy , scuffed shoes. Lillian has thirty cents ready in her right hand. The rest of her money is in a slit in the lining of her left boot, in one of the hidden silk pockets Yaakov has made for her, and underneath the bottom of her satchel. Thirty cents seems right; it's what Reuben paid for them to come home when they went uptown, it's what Meyer paid when they went to Ye Olde Chop House. Thirty cents could be the going rate for metropolitan taxicab rides, and if it's more than that, Lillian will not hesitate (falter, stutter, fluctuate, and also shilly-shally, blow hot and cold, or straddle the fence). She will throw down her three dimes and run like hell."