Richard Russo

Any new Russo is cause for celebration, but I always wonder what writers are actually telling us when they return to their old characters: are they out of juice? Or do they miss their old friends like we do? In any case, this visit is so hilariously poignant and perfect that it's easy to slide right back onto a barstool in North Bath a/k/a Loserville, upstate NY, hard by the much cooler-stand-in-for-Saratoga-Springs-and-Skidmore town of Schuyler. And I rejoice to rejoin Sully, now 70, with a show more bad ticker, yet just like Paul Newman, Russo's doppleganger in all of his novels and in my imagination. There's also Ruth, Sully's part-time lover, his faithful and pitiful companion Rub, his faithful and smarter canine companion (also Rub), and the whole gamut of denizens smelling "like stale beer and overmatched urine cakes."

Sully despises Police Chief Raymer, who's got 99+ problems of his own, including a cobra, a brand new second personality, a stigmata, a dead wife, and the alleged butterfly tattoo on officer Charice Bond's ass.

The smooth flow between comedy and tragedy, between loud explosions and internal contemplation, is some of what makes Russo a hero to readers. The rest you can identify on your own when you open your copy. I'm headed for the back catalogue and especially "Nobody's Fool", and maybe even the movie too. show less

"We let people keep their secrets but then convince ourselves we know them anyway. Take Jacy. We all were in love with her,, but what did we really know about her? I'd never met anybody like her before, so I had no frame of reference. And if you think about it, she was in the same boat. We must've been as mysterious to her as she was to us." (171)

Three guys and a girl become fast friends during their time at a private eastern college in the early 1970's set against the backdrop of the show more Vietnam War. Jacy is the rich girl and Lincoln, Mickey, and Teddy all end up in an exclusive private school with her, but Jacy Has never wanted for anything and they are from different backgrounds and on scholarships. In fact, they earn their spending money by serving meals at Jacy's sorority house. Russo does an amazing job with male characters. He examines their backgrounds and motives in detail. Female characters are another story. In this case it doesn't matter because Jacy is a mystery character, an enigma that charms her friends and then suddenly disappears.

Forty years after college graduation, the three male friends have a reunion on Martha's Vineyard. Of course, Jacy's disappearance comes up. Russo is a gifted storyteller. While this is not his best work, it is a page-turner. Teddy makes an offhand remark early in the book saying Memory Lane is vastly overrated. I disagree. I'll walk down that lane any day with Mr. Russo as my guide. He simply can't write a bad book. show less

Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey were fast friends during their college days in the 1960s. Now in their mid-60s, life has taken each of them in very different directions. As Lincoln prepares to sell a family vacation home in Martha’s Vineyard, he invites the men to join him for a long weekend “reunion.” Notably absent is Jacy, a woman every one of them was infatuated with in college, who disappeared without a trace after a similar weekend at the Cape shortly after graduation.

Each man comes show more to Martha's Vineyard with baggage. The most significant moment of their young lives was December 1, 1969: the night the Vietnam draft lottery was broadcast on national television. Mickey, with the lowest number, ultimately went to Canada to avoid military service; Teddy spent his life in academia but never found a clear sense of purpose; Lincoln was never at risk of going to Vietnam but is haunted by his father’s dogmatic presence and a sense of failure despite all outward appearances. The novel explores the turns their lives took after the lottery and the men they have become, while also slowly revealing Jacy’s story.

I most enjoyed the character studies in this novel, as well as Russo’s references to modern politics (the weekend reunion takes place in 2015). The mystery of Jacy’s disappearance was sometimes too dominant, and its resolution a little too pat but then this is supposed to be a novel about male friendships, not a “whodunnit.” It’s not a bad book, but it’s not Russo’s best either. show less

Do some fucking thing. If it doesn’t work, do something else “
Ok so I love Richard Russo, and have read almost all of his books, my favorite being Nobody’s Fool which features Donald “Sully” Sullivan whose image will always be cemented in my mind by the actor Paul Newman who starred in the movie version. This novel is the third of the series, taking place in North Bath, NY. This is small town life, with walkable bars and diners and plenty of side jobs that Sully was able to show more complete, some legal and some not. In this book Sully has been dead for ten years but most of the other characters still carry on, leaving the narrative to center around Doug Raymer, the sheriff, Peter Sullivan, his son, and Rub Speers, his sidekick. There’s a lot of plot here for a story that takes place in three days time, including a suicide, police corruption, interracial romances, and the everyday struggle to survive. This last theme is illustrated by Birdie who owns the bar and Janey who owns the diner. Their relationships and misgivings also resonate throughout this third person narrative. Luckily for us, Sully also haunts the minds and actions of these characters so that we feel his presence has not yet been forgotten. Though this seems like the natural conclusion to these lives in a town that is also shutting down, I’d like to recommend a prequel, say Sully during the war. Though I probably should let it go; thanking Mr. Russo for his gift of one of my favorite literary characters.

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Vera’s grip on sanity had always been relaxed, but over time her behavior was increasingly batshit.

When it came to authority, Raymer liked to think he was gender neutral, equally resentful of both men and women.

The whole Band-Aid concept was deeply flawed. The idea was that when you ripped it off, the pain might be intense, but only for a second, and then it would be over. Whereas in reality ripping it off would reveal that the wound had not healed. Underneath, it was still red and swollen and wet and angry, and the pain didn’t go away. It hurt worse. And now, with the Band-Aid gone, you got to look at what lay beneath and pick at it and…

he’d returned home determined to shrink his geographical perimeter to a size that suited him—a small, familiar world that could be navigated drunk if need be.

“Show me a fortune,” she liked to say, “and I’ll show you a crime. Hell, I’d be rich, too, if everybody in my family’d enslaved people for two centuries.”

“Can you tell me what’s the matter?” “I don’t know,” Ruth told her, though that was a lie. Everything was the matter. The world was a place where signals that might have saved you never made it through the noise. But mostly this: she’d lived too long.

Raymer, too, had been drinking liberally from the same goblet of guilt and remorse.

Rule Number One: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

When her make-up was right, she was plain-looking and borderline homely when it wasn’t.

Carl scratched his groin thoughtfully, as if the answer to this question might be located in his boxers. And why not? The majority of Carl’s problems had always been located there, not to mention a few of Peter’s own, if he was completely honest.

He had the look of a man who’d decided hours earlier to get positively shit-faced and had made excellent progress toward that straightforward goal.

“Crushes don’t have to be realistic to be real,” she pointed out. “All that’s required is a hole in your heart that you can’t fill.”

“When you’re Black, you keep tryin’ to make it work like white time. Make it go in a straight line, but Black time keeps loopin’ back. Remindin’ you you aren’t free. Keepin’ you vigilant. Circlin’ back to what matters. Like stayin’ alive. Like not getting lynched.”

In Sully’s view, life demanded being on your feet and—speaking of feet—putting one in front of the other. You sat down only when you were done doing.

What Thomas’s sudden appearance yesterday had brought home to him so forcefully was that the figure in the carpet that was his life was becoming discernible, and it wasn’t one Peter had intended to weave. Would Will come to a similar realization one day? Because he, too, was busy at the loom, though for him it would be years before the inevitable mix of intended and unintended consequences, of fate and free will, of errors in judgment and dumb luck, would yield a recognizable pattern.

What he understood now, sitting alone in the cafeteria, listening to those distant sirens, was that it wasn’t doubt that leads a man to give up on life and tie a rope around his neck. It was certainty.

He’d been in the throes of despair, and Raymer’s own problem had always been the exact opposite: his seemingly congenital inability to surrender hope. However untethered from reality hope might be, he’d always clung tenaciously to the possibility that somehow, some way, things just might work out.

“Hold on. I invite you out for a beer and you accept, and now you’re saying you don’t drink?” “Oh, I drink just fine,” he told her, thanking Birdie for the soda she set in front of him. “Stopping is what I’m not real great at. Why? Is it a deal breaker?”

“How do you like your steak?” “Like a good vet could still save it.”

Was this her superpower, Janey wondered: an untutored, innate ability to know the exact wrong thing to say to violent men?

“Okay,” Peter said, “but let’s not overlook the obvious. What if gifted just means you’re somebody who’s been given gifts. Piano lessons. Tennis camp. A home full of books. Spring break with the family at Disney. Summer vacations abroad. Have you ever noticed how people who get gifts tend to get a lot of them?”

What would be difficult to give up, Peter thought, was not the idea of finding a finer place to live out what remained of his life, so much as his fond hope that when he at last arrived there, he would find a finer version of himself, as if that other Peter Sullivan already existed and had been patiently awaiting his arrival, wondering what the hell was taking him so long to show up, so their real life could begin. There was a word for this, of course, and Peter knew what it was: folly. show less