So this is my third or fourth Russo and not my favorite. It did not surprise me to discover that it is his first novel, as some pieces were too overt and convenient for my liking.This novel again deals with the politics and relationships in a small northeastern town (this time in New York). There ...
Absolutely haunting, addictive and baffling. I will now describe why, but wonder if it has the same effect on people who don't share my experiences in just such a book's setting.What Russo has encapsulated here is the wordless sense of security and unconscious insularity, which is, miraculously, all...
I really liked this book. I have read several books by Russo, so I was interested to see how close his small town settings came to his real life. I was mostly surprised that the book was almost completely about his mother (someone else aptly called it a “mom-oir”). He does acknowledge it at the star...
I grew up in a small town where I knew the majority of its residents or if not the faces were familiar. I was known mostly by association and not my name. A granddaughter of a lifelong member and still current resident (at 94 years old) of the same small town. Suffice it to say, because of this, I w...
So this is my fourth (fifth?) Russo novel and I was not impressed (yes, I realize that it is award winning). Maybe I just expected too much, but I did not find the characters or the setting to be nearly as believable as Empire Falls or Bridge of Sighs. The book was entertaining (after all I did gi...
There are two weddings used as bookends with a year in the protagonist's life in between. Jack Griffin, after 34 years of marriage, is dealing with the question of who he wants to be when he grows up. His life has sort of snuck up on him and he's not sure if he's happy with where he ends up.We get t...
So here's a memoir focused on a man's relationship with his mentally ill mother. You'd think it would be sad, depressing, frustrating. Not so. It's all about survival and resilience. True, some things don't get better: the author's hometown of Gloversville, NY, went downhill after the glove factorie...
First, I must say that I am a Russo fan. I like his nuance, I love his characters, and I think his prose runs from heartbreakingly acute observations of human folly to laugh out loud entertainment.In this novel, Russo follows the life of Lucy Lynch who never leaves the small town of Thomaston NY. ...
I was working at a bookstore when "Straight Man" was first released and it made quite a splash. My compadres at the store were talking it up, and customers who read it thought it was a riot. I probably would have agreed if I read it at the time. But I didn't. Years later I dove into Richard Russ...
This book is more "mom"-oir than memoir. You won't learn much about Rick Russo except as it relates to his mother's inescapable grip on him. Jean Russo was one doozy of a dippy demanding dame. She taught Rick to think of himself and his mother as essentially one person -- "You and me against the wor...
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