The title of Amy Bloom’s book “Love Invents Us,” is the come hither snake that attracted me to this novel. Only because it is so true. Love makes us the human beings we are – what we don’t get, what we do, what we settle for. The main character n this book, Elizabeth, has wanted love all her life: from her parents, from older gentlemen who have took her in, from a professor who put her on a pedestal. And it is also love that shaped what she gave: from the love of her life she lost and found again, from the dying man she nursed, and even for the child she bore and is raising.  Bloom paints a complicated woman, but I understood her completely. In a lot of ways, I am her. The loosely chronological chapters aren’t threaded tightly, but we still get a sense of this woman, and by the end of her journey when she has given up on love I cannot feel but empathize. Sometimes you live your life searching for something, and one day realize you are never going to find it, and yes, it’s ok. I started this book when I was on vacation, but I could never get into it then. I continued as soon as I got home, and perhaps I needed the reality of life, and the everyday melancholy to grasp its heart.