Amy Bloom Discusses Her Novel 'I'll Be Right Here' and Themes of Family, Love, and Loss

Thematic Core of 'I'll Be Right Here'

• 🎯 Amy Bloom identifies her core writing themes as family, love, sex, and death, which she feels cover the entirety of human experience.
• 💡 The novel 'I'll Be Right Here' begins in occupied Paris during WWII and spans 50 years, exploring these central themes.

Character Development and Found Families

• ✍️ The protagonist, Gazala, of Algerian parentage, becomes an assistant to the writer Colette in occupied Paris.
• 🤝 After the war, Gazala moves to America and forms a close bond with two sisters, Elma and Anne Conn, and later her brother, creating a found family known as 'the greats'.
• 🧩 Bloom expresses a deep interest in found and made families, exploring how individuals who are not biologically related can become central to each other's lives.

Exploring Family Mysteries and Personal Histories

• 🤫 Bloom discusses her own family's reticence about sharing personal histories, noting that her parents and grandparents were silent on the subject of their pasts.
• 🔍 This mystery of not knowing one's ancestors before their own existence fuels her writing, exploring what people share and what they keep private.
• 📜 She shares anecdotes about her grandmother's limited English and her grandfather's deportation from Russia, highlighting the enigmatic nature of family history.

Memoir vs. Fiction and the Writer's Self

• 🎭 Bloom reflects on her memoir, 'In Love,' about her late husband's Alzheimer's and death, stating she would prefer never to write a memoir again.
• 💡 She believes that a writer's own personality inevitably leaks into their work, regardless of whether it's fiction or memoir, citing Philip Roth as an example.
• ✍️ Returning to fiction offers a relief from public announcements about her personality, but she acknowledges that **