Review of Lucky Us by Amy Bloom

Title:  Lucky Us
Author:  Amy Bloom
Publication Information:  Random House, July 2014
How I Got This Book:  From BookRiot's RiotRead book club.

Goodreads Synopsis:  "My father's wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us."

Brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny, Lucky Us introduces us to Eva and Iris. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star, and Eva, the sidekick, journey across 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris's ambitions take them from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine through a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life. From Brooklyn's beauty parlors to London's West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat, and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.

My Thoughts:  It took me a few tries before I really got pulled into this book, but once I was drawn in, I couldn't, wouldn't, escape.

Bloom created such interesting characters that made me want to continue learning more and more about them.  This was such an interesting place and time to write about and Bloom weaves a very interesting narrative.  Just when you think these down and out people are sunk, something happens that helps further their aims.

I absolutely loved Eva!  She reminded me so much of Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, in that she was kind of shuffled here and there by the circumstances of her life, as opposed to by choice, she loved her family, and she had a tremendous love of learning that frequently had to be put on the back shelf.  Still, everything turns out all right somehow in the end.

Speaking of the end--the last few pages of this book made the novel.  I can't really talk about them without spoiling anything major, but OMG!  SO. Beautiful!

I am so glad that I received this novel and that I finally picked it up.  It was a five star read for me and I highly recommend it to people who love reading.  The plot, narrative structure, characters, and language come together to create a wonderful storm of a novel that will leave you thinking and feeling for quite some time.