In January 2020, Amy Bloom travelled with her husband Brian to Switzerland, where he was helped by Dignitas to end his life while Amy sat with him and held his hand. Brian was terminally ill and for the last year of his life Amy had struggled to find a way to support his wish to take control of his death, to not submerge 'into the darkness of an expiring existence'. Written with piercing insight and wit, In Love is Bloom's intimate, authentic and startling account of losing Brian, first slowly to the disease of Alzheimer's, and then on becoming a widow. It charts the anxiety and pain of the process that led them to Dignitas, while never avoiding the complex ethical problems that are raised by assisted death. A poignant love letter to Bloom's husband and a passionate outpouring of grief, In Love reaffirms the power and value of human relationships.
Review
Reading this book is, purely and simply, a transcendent experience. In Love is a thrillingly beautiful, laser-eyed book about love, life, mortality and, most remarkably, about the ways in which no one of the three can be separated from the others. Prepare yourself to be heartbroken, expanded, unsettled, and filled with hope. -- Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and A Home at the End of the World
I read In Love in one sitting on a long flight and a flight never went by so fast. I am full of admiration for this important memoir. The mastery of this book draws us in, and delivers us, by the last page, changed. -- Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club
IN LOVE is a buoyant and entrancing memoir about one of the worst things that can happen to a couple. Bloom's unfiltered glimpse into a working marriage is both a touchingly besotted portrait of her husband and a wrenching account of his gradual retreat from her. Their resolute approach to his death yields up a story pulsing with raw life -- Alison Bechdel
This is a beautiful necessary book for anyone who loves their partner deeply and wonders and worries what the end might be like: poignant, kind, funny and ultimately redemptive. One cries a lot, in the best of ways -- Alain de Botton
A remarkable book from one of the USA's most consistently brilliant writers. The subject is death, so the end is inevitable; but Bloom's story is full of surprises and some of the most heartbreaking, honest and funniest writing you'll ever read -- Roddy Doyle
What a book this is-full of everything that matters. In Love is gripping, moving, and beautifully told. I'm so glad I read it -- Meg Wolitzer
A lasting monument to the power of love -- Damian Barr
Staggeringly honest - Guardian
About the Author
A Amy Bloom is the author of three collections of short stories, Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Granta, 2010), Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, also published in one volume Rowing to Eden(Granta, 2015), a collection of essays, Normal, andfour novels, White Houses (Granta, 2018) Lucky Us (Granta, 2014), Away (Granta, 2007),and Love Invents Us. She is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University.
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