Successfully erotic sex scenes are notoriously difficult to write, but novelist Amy Bloom has hit the jackpot in her new novel, Lucky Us, featuring one of the most glamorous orgy scenes of all time. The irresistibly steamy Hollywood party involves a roomful of stars and starlets dancing, flirting, and seducing in the old Hollywood of the 1940s.
More than the erotic adventures, there are a host of characters in this novel to cheer on, to kiss goodbye with sorrow or glee, and ones to love with all your heart. Above all, this is a story about the messy and precious lives all of us lead, and that sometimes we are graced enough—maybe smart enough—to see our human foibles as they are, and become the people we hope to be.
Named one of the great reads of the summer by New York magazine, and the recipient of many starred reviews, Lucky Us is perhaps Bloom's most cinematic, fastest-moving novel in its scenes and scope. Each chapter title is a song from the 1940s, from Fats Waller's "You're Not the Only Oyster in the Soup" to "I May Be Wrong But I Think You're Wonderful," sung by a young Doris Day.
Each of Bloom's characters deserves his or her own novel, from Eva with the innocent face and determined heart, to Gus, the All-American auto mechanic and every woman's hero. There is Francisco, the inventive, fearless gay hairdresser, and his outrageous sisters, Bea and Carnie. The characters lives intertwine in a way that is both lifelike and characteristic of Dickens and Jonathan Franzen.
For fans of historic novels like those of E. L. Doctorow and Hilary Mantel, Lucky Us takes us into the past while making it feel like the present.
Join the conversation by email, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
GUESTS:
- Samuel Arbesman? is the author of The Half-Life of Facts.
- Amy Bloom is the author of Lucky Us.
