|
Loading... Bridge of Sighs (original 2007; edition 2008)by Richard Russo
Work detailsBridge of Sighs by Richard Russo (2007)
None.  melissarochelle | Apr 13, 2013 |  This was my first Russo novel and won't be the last. Sometimes the dynamic of a family in a small town makes for the some of the most interesting stories. In the beginning, it is teased that the main action of the story may move to Venice (as the title implies), but that never really happens. This story is about a small town in New York, and the coming of age (and old age) of Louis C. ("Lucy") Lynch. It's also about his wife, his best friend, his parents, small town prejudices, and how love is complicated by other feelings. How unresolved ambiguities are part of life. How life is bittersweet and all the more worth it for that reason. Russo understands all of his characters on a deep level, and makes sure that we do too. By the time you finish this book, there are no villains, and everyone has taken his or her shot at being a hero. Like Lou's mother, Tessa, we see both the bad and the good in all the characters, and love them anyway. That's the way it should be. Tip for fans of Pat Conroy: Richard Russo is probably right up your alley. Reading this novel, with its depiction of small city life, prompted me to give my son a driving tour of my home town, East Liverpool, Ohio yesterday after our workout. I don't know if my ramblings and looking at the much-changed city helped him imagine what it was like to grow up there, but I made the attempt. (  ) EricKibler | Apr 6, 2013 | This was my first Russo novel and won't be the last. Sometimes the dynamic of a family in a small town makes for the some of the most interesting stories. In the beginning, it is teased that the main action of the story may move to Venice (as the title implies), but that never really happens. This story is about a small town in New York, and the coming of age (and old age) of Louis C. ("Lucy") Lynch. It's also about his wife, his best friend, his parents, small town prejudices, and how love is complicated by other feelings. How unresolved ambiguities are part of life. How life is bittersweet and all the more worth it for that reason. Russo understands all of his characters on a deep level, and makes sure that we do too. By the time you finish this book, there are no villains, and everyone has taken his or her shot at being a hero. Like Lou's mother, Tessa, we see both the bad and the good in all the characters, and love them anyway. That's the way it should be. Tip for fans of Pat Conroy: Richard Russo is probably right up your alley. Reading this novel, with its depiction of small city life, prompted me to give my son a driving tour of my home town, East Liverpool, Ohio yesterday after our workout. I don't know if my ramblings and looking at the much-changed city helped him imagine what it was like to grow up there, but I made the attempt. ( ) EricKibler | Apr 6, 2013 | Another wonderful Russo novel about small town folk who scrape out a living after the demise of the industry around which the town was built. There are many themes in this novel from how we are shaped (and sometimes crippled) by the experiences of our youth, our families (we may become our parents more than we think or like), classism and racism in small town America and how that further restricts our apparent freedoms to shape our own lives. It is also about kind, accommodating people who do not effect broader change in society and people who feel superior to them and are contemptuous of anything less than grand displays of defiance- people are their pawns. There is also a glimmer of triumph- not swooping and miraculous, but small and hopeful. This novel is a bit bumpy in parts, but full of complex and quirky characters who are brought to life by this talented author. (  ) aylin1 | Mar 31, 2013 | At first it was hard to getinto this book. Difficult to tell apart all the different characters. They all tell a part from the story from their own view and it took me a while to figure out who was talking to me at what moment. But, after all I liked the book, the story of a man's life, mixed with all the people he meets through the years and that somehow keep playing a role. It was a quiet book, but not at all boring. (  ) BoekenTrol71 | Mar 31, 2013 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0375414959, Hardcover)Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Richard Russo's first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, Bridge of Sighs is a typically stunning portrait of three small town families struggling--like the town itself--to strike a balance between obsessively embracing their own history or shunning it entirely, with devastating consequences along both paths. Bridge of Sighs is pure Russo: funny, heartbreaking, and ringing completely true. --Jon Foro(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:44:21 -0500) Louis Charles (Lucy) Lynch has spent all his sixty years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for forty of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he's had plenty of reasons not to be - chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an 'empire' of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation. Lucy and Sarah are also preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy, where his oldest friend, a renowned painter, has exiled himself far from anything they'd known in childhood. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the history he's writing of his hometown and family. And with his story interspersed with that of Noonan, the native son who'd fled so long ago, the destinies building up around both of them (and Sarah, too) are relentless, constantly surprising, and utterly revealing. Shifting from a small town in upstate New York to Venice, the novel explores the connection between two very different men - one a local grocer, the other a world-famous painter, and the woman whom both have loved.… (more) (summary from another edition) |
 Google Books — Loading...
Popular coversRatingAverage: (3.79)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (1)
2
I almost wanted the bad guy to get the girl. I liked the main character, Lucy, but he wasn't a hero. I felt like Lucy let the girl down, while Bobby could have given her the life she deserved. However, these are the types of choices people make everyday and sometimes they take the difficult path. (