In Love

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.

Author Biography

Amy Bloom is the author of four novels, White Houses (Granta, 2017), Lucky Us (Granta, 2014), Away (Granta, 2007), and Love Invents Us; 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, all also published in one volume as Rowing to Eden (Granta, 2015); and a collection of essays, Normal. She is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University.