About This Book
When Amy Bloom's husband Brian received an Alzheimer's diagnosis, he made a decision that would test every dimension of their marriage: he wanted to die on his own terms, before the disease could hollow him out. In Love is the story of what it means to love someone enough to honor a wish that breaks your heart — a memoir about the impossible calculus of devotion, autonomy, and grief that arrives before the loss itself has even happened.
Bloom is a novelist first, and it shows. The prose is precise and unsentimental without ever being cold — she writes about anguish the way a surgeon operates, with steady hands and absolute attention. The book is short, almost severe in its economy, which turns out to be exactly right: every sentence earns its place, and the restraint makes the emotional weight land harder than any amount of elaboration could. What lingers isn't just the love story at its center, but the honesty with which Bloom examines her own fear, ambivalence, and the strange grace of accompanying someone to the edge of their life.