In fact, White Houses is not really Eleanor’s story – it is Hick’s. “There were so many examples of Eleanor Roosevelt’s voice in the real world, the woman wrote like 20 books,” explains Bloom. Hick, meanwhile, was the preeminent journalist of her day, the first woman to have a byline in the New York Times, but is largely forgotten. “One of the things that caused her to be read out of history — given that most historians were male— is that she was not a guy’s gal. She was a singular entity; a woman journalist who was not doing weddings and society events.”
Although popular with men and women, observes Bloom, “she was not really a suitable subject for the male gaze” which often led to her being ignored. This also gave her the freedom to hide in plain sight; living at the White House while the affair was underway.
“People were not looking at Eleanor and Lorena as if they were Dietrich and Garbo.” For Bloom that was what made their story special. “I wanted to write about the attention they gave to each other, and what it was like to feel beautiful with someone even if you are not beautiful in the eyes of the world.”
White Houses is above all a love story, that of two women, past their prime, in a relationship that would have scandalised the world. Some of Eleanor’s 3,000 or so letters to Hick are in public archives, and with phrases like “J’taime et j’adore “and “I long to kiss you on the south east corner of your lips”, there can be no doubt of her intent, although some have tried to argue it was a platonic friendship. Bloom is having none of that.
“People say ‘oh the alleged affair’ and I would say ‘did you read those letters’? It would be like describing our encounter right now as our alleged meeting,” she exclaims. She came across the story while researching the period for Lucky Us, and speedily headed to Hyde Park, the former Roosevelt residence, to learn more. “Anybody who thinks that this is the correspondence of two pals has probably never had a friend and never had a lover.”
In the era of fake news, Bloom made clear to highlight “at the front flap at the back flap and in the author’s notes!” that this is a work of fiction. “I used the known facts, like Franklin’s first inaugural speech. All those gaps between the facts are available to the novelist.”
Twice married to men, having had a relationship with a woman, Bloom draws on personal experience in her writing. “I don’t think anybody can write a novel without drawing on their life, on who you have loved and has loved you, and on relationships that have grown and withered. Anyone who says their memoir is 100 percent true is lying and anyone who says their novel is 100 percent fiction is lying.”
Adamant as she is that this isn’t a political novel, Bloom is undoubtedly a political animal. “It’s both reassuring and terrible to see that we have had other terrible presidents who have made terrible decisions and had a marked lack of interest in the constitution,” she says, citing Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover “who kept watching the dominos fall with the depression and saying things like the market will correct itself”.
Bloom’s Jewishness is largely latent so many generations on from her family’s arrival in America, although she expects her four granddaughters to be batmitzvahed and will be “up there on the bimah stumbling through my Hebrew.”
But she gives her Jewish heritage credit for her desire to leave the world a better place. ”Working against Donald Trump has given me an excellent opportunity to exercise my rights as a citizen. And I they are I believe my instructions as a Jew.”
She wanted Hillary to win —“I would have like to have seen the girl who brought us our tea as president more than Trump” — and thinks Clinton would have been a better president than she was a candidate. “It’s hard to think it wasn’t sexism when you look at all the crap candidates that have come and gone and all the crap presidents,” she sighs. “I think it’s hard to be a mother. Probably until men give birth there’s always going to be a certain pushback against mothers. Either we love them and want them to be home baking or they were mean and they weren’t home or they were mean and they were home, but any way you slice it it’s an extra layer of emotional response. What I say to my daughters is you don’t ever want to pretend sexism doesn’t exist and you don’t ever want to dwell on it so long you can’t get out of bed.”
We meet on the day that Philip Roth’s death is announced; amid the plaudits, many commentators have described his writing as misogynist. Bloom chuckles. “You bet. My general feeling is if I never read a misogynist author I’d have to stay home and read Jane Austen for the rest of my life,” she says.”
She read Goodbye Columbus as a teenager and remembers thinking she knew his characters; that his world overlapped with her father’s world. “He was smart and funny about my people,” she says.
She expects him to be read long after peers like Bellow and Malamud. “He was funnier, he was more interested in more things around him that were not Philip Roth centric. His books are often about him but never only about him, and I think he was always just a more modern writer than those other two.”
These days Bloom has almost no time to keep up with her bookshelf. She is already working on new projects; another historical novel, and a short story collection about a married couple.
She’s also collaborating on a children’s book about two best friends, one black and one white.
When we meet, at a rooftop bar overlooking London, she’s on a whirlwind European tour; yesterday was Ireland, tomorrow the Netherlands. First up when she’s home is finishing a script for a television mini-series adapting White Houses (Bloom previously created the TV series State of Mind).
As she notes wryly, finding the right actresses will be no mean feat. “It’s not that easy to think of someone who is a leading lady who is 5’9 and stout,” she laughs. “I am figuring that a Hick is going to walk into our life.” Here’s hoping.
White Houses by Amy Bloom is published by Granta Books
