Lost and found

An unconventional family is at the heart of this tale of an Algerian woman finding a home in New York.

- 

Then, Now and Always - the three parts of Amy Bloom's new novel - could describe how her writing resonates for the reader, touching down in different times and leaving a lasting imprint. As the book opens, an elderly Algerian woman named Gazala is dying in New York, her dearest friends and her beloved brother at her side. Then the years roll back to a snapshot of Gazala, her brother Samir and her father, living in Paris in 1930, and then to that city in wartime, after the children are left orphaned and vulnerable.

Gazala's massage skills lead her to the woman described in a chapter headed as “Mme Colette, Famous Writer, Anti-Semite, Beloved Friend”. (Bloom's chapter titles are stories in themselves.) The description of the teenage girl's first glimpse of the famous author is but the first of many brilliant, almost tactile evocations of people and places (and food, which is a constant throughout): “Her hair is ridiculous, prostitute-orange flaming out in a big frizz, and her lips are carmine, the red seeping into the little lines around her mouth. Her eyes are slanted under the folds of her brows, kohl-rimmed cat's eyes in a dead white face, powder in every fold and crack, and I can see that she is aware of all of it, of its effect, and she’s pleased with it.”

The other real-life character Bloom superbly brings to life is the famous French jeweller Suzanne Belperron.