I could fill this post with quotes but here are just a few favourites:Įleanor’s love was like some shabby old footstool. It’s an extraordinarily intimate portrait, both of the two women and of Roosevelt’s presidency, and the writing is sublime, often conveying a great deal in a couple of well-chosen words. The storytelling is engrossing and evocative – Hick’s description of her brief time with a travelling freak show is a particular delight. Both Hick and Eleanor are vividly drawn: Hick’s sharp-eyed view of Eleanor’s need for approbation and moral probity – so hard for those around her to match and at times, so exasperating – contrast with her passion and tenderness for her lover. Theirs is a deep and lasting love which continues until Eleanor dies in 1962.īloom narrates this elegantly spare novella through Hick’s dry, earthy sometimes humorous voice, painting a picture of ‘30s and early ’40s America through the lens of her experience. Hick remains long after their ardour has cooled. When Roosevelt was elected, Hick joined them in her own spartan apartment – Eleanor tacitly accepting her husband’s mistresses while he returned the favour. Both Hick and Eleanor share memories of a childhood marked by the loss of their mothers but whereas Eleanor’s was cushioned by privilege, Hick’s was scarred by negligence and worse, bowdlerised to spare Eleanor’s sensitivity. She’s no stranger to poverty but what she saw appalled her. Wary of accusations of bias, Hick gave up a promising career as a White House reporter when she took up residence, instead traveling the country and reporting to Federal Emergency Relief Administration on the desperate conditions wrought by the Depression.
It’s to Hick that Eleanor turns for comfort, solace and help with the sacks stuffed with condolence letters. Once caught up in a passionate affair, these two women still love each other dearly. Hick waits at Eleanor’s New York apartment on Washington Square just three days after Roosevelt’s death. Roosevelt, Bloom’s novella tells the story of his wife Eleanor and Lorena Hickok, the woman who joined them in the White House. Spanning a weekend in April 1945, shortly after the death of Franklin D. Hopes were extraordinarily high, then, for White Houses but they were surpassed to the extent that this post is in danger of degenerating into one long gush. Her writing is both deft and empathetic, pressing all my literary buttons. I’ve yet to read anything by Amy Bloom that I’ve not loved.
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