Download or read book Understanding Richard Russo written by Kathleen Drowne and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Understanding Richard Russo Kathleen Drowne explores the significant themes and techniques in Richard Russo's seven novels, one memoir, and two short story collections, including the 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Empire Falls. Known for assembling large casts of eccentric characters and developing sweeping multigenerational storylines, Russo brings to life the hard-hit rural manufacturing towns of the Northeast as he explores the bewildering, painful complexities of family relationships. Drowne first recounts Russo's biography, then explores his novels chronologically, and concludes with a chapter dedicated to his shorter fiction and nonfiction. As Drowne invites readers to appreciate more fully this accomplished chronicler of American small towns, she shows how the empathy that Russo creates for his protagonists is amplified by the careful detail with which he realizes their worlds. In her approaches to Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody's Fool, Empire Falls, and Bridge of Sighs, Drowne traces the primary recurring concern of Russo's work: the plight of deteriorating rural communities and the dramatic impact of that decline on their blue-collar inhabitants and families. Russo's characters have jobs, not careers, and Russo's family relationships are not just nuclear, but multigenerational. Drowne shows that in such a web of powerlessness and attachment Russo explores relationships between emotionally scarred sons and their abusive, absent, or neglectful fathers as well as the frustrated relationships with mothers who yearn for their sons to turn out differently than their fathers. Drowne also highlights Russo's talent for realistic but highly eccentric characters—worn-out construction workers and odd-jobbers, barflies, has-beens, and ne'er-do-wells—whose lives are emblematic of both the dignity and the desperation of crumbling Rust Belt towns. And out of his melancholic surroundings and struggling characters, Drowne shows how Russo consistently reveals a remarkable, literate humor. Her study offers readers an insightful point of entry into one of America's finest contemporary comic writers, a so-called bard of the working class and a chronicler of small-town America.
Download or read book Bridge of Sighs written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-09-25 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes "a magnificent, bighearted” novel (The Boston Globe) about small-town America that follows Louis Charles Lynch (“Lucy”) and his wife of forty years as they prepare to embark on a vacation to Italy. Lucy is sixty years old and has spent his entire life in Thomaston, New York. 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's oldest friend, once a rival for his wife's affection, leads a life in Venice far removed from Thomaston. 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. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book That Old Cape Magic written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-08-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls delivers his most intimate novel yet: "An astute portrait of a 30-year marriage, in all its promise and pain…. His honest, heartfelt storytelling—like a cooling breeze off a certain New England shoreline—has never felt fresher" (People). For Griffin, all paths, all memories, converge at Cape Cod. The Cape is where he took his childhood summer vacations, where he and his wife, Joy, honeymooned, where they decided he’d leave his LA screenwriting job to become a college professor, and where they celebrated the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. But when their beloved Laura’s wedding takes place a year later, Griffin is caught between chauffeuring his mother’s and father’s ashes in two urns and contending with Joy and her large, unruly family. Both he and she have also brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened? By turns hilarious, rueful, and uplifting, That Old Cape Magic is a profoundly involving novel about marriage, family, and all the other ties that bind. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book Chances Are written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Russo’s] first novel in ten years hits the ball out of the park. . . . You’ll lap up this gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” —The Boston Globe “A cascade of charm. . . . Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.”—The Washington Post One beautiful September day, three men in their late sixties convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today—Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey is a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-five years later, three lives and that of a significant other are put on displaywhile the distant past confounds the present ina relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are . . . introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga.
Download or read book Everybody s Fool written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls returns to North Bath, the Rust Belt town first brought to unforgettable life in Nobody’s Fool. Now, ten years later, Doug Raymer has become the chief of police and is tormented by the improbable death of his wife—not to mention his suspicion that he was a failure of a husband. Meanwhile, the irrepressible Sully has come into a small fortune, but is suddenly faced with a VA cardiologist’s estimate that he only has a year or two left to live. As Sully frantically works to keep the bad news from the important people in his life, we are reunited with his son and grandson . . . with Ruth, the married woman with whom he carried on for years . . . and with the hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren’t still best friends. Filled with humor, heart, and hard-luck characters you can’t help but love, Everybody’s Fool is a crowning achievement from one of the great storytellers of our time. Look for Everybody’s Fool, available now, and Somebody’s Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book Elsewhere written by Richard Russo and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a personal account of the author's youth, his parents, and the 1950s upstate New York town they struggled to escape, recounting the encroaching poverty and illness that challenged everyday life and the dreams his mother instilled that inspired his career.
Download or read book Mohawk written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes a wonderfully written novel about a small town in New York whose citizens have fallen on hard times. "Immensely readable and sympathetic.... Mr. Russo has an instinctive gift for capturing the rhythms of small-town life." —The New York Times Mohawk, New York, is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money, and, inevitably, another set of false teeth. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over the care of her sick father. And their son, Randall, is deliberately neglecting his school work—because in a place like Mohawk it doesn't pay to be too smart. In Mohawk, Russo explores these lives with profound compassion and flint-hard wit. Out of derailed ambitions and old loves, secret hatreds and communal myths, he has created a richly plotted, densely populated, and wonderfully written novel that captures every nuance of America's backyard. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book Straight Man written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. • Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank. William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character—he is a born anarchist—and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans. In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. In short, Straight Man is classic Russo—side-splitting, poignant, compassionate, and unforgettable. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book Empire Falls written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The bestselling author of Nobody's Fool and Straight Man delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace. “Rich, humorous ... Mr. Russo’s most seductive book thus far.” —The New York Times Welcome to Empire Falls, a blue-collar town full of abandoned mills whose citizens surround themselves with the comforts and feuds provided by lifelong friends and neighbors and who find humor and hope in the most unlikely places, in this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo. Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book The Risk Pool written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes a wonderfully funny novel set in Mohawk, New York, where Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called adult. "Superbly original and maliciously funny." —The New York Times Book Review His father, Sam, cultivates bad habits so assiduously that he is stuck at the bottom of his auto insurance risk pool. His mother, Jenny, is slowly going crazy from resentment at a husband who refuses either to stay or to stay away. As Ned veers between allegiances to these grossly inadequate role models, Richard Russo gives us a book that overflows with outsized characters and outlandish predicaments and whose vision of family is at once irreverent and unexpectedly moving. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book Nobody s Fool written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls, this slyly funny, moving novel about a blue-collar town in upstate New York—and about Sully, one of its unluckiest citizens, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years—is a classic American story. "Remarkable.... A revelation of the human heart." —The Washington Post Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith. Look for Everybody’s Fool, available now, and Somebody’s Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book Understanding Richard Russo written by Kathleen Morgan Drowne and published by . This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Richard Russo explores the significant themes and patterns in this contemporary American author s seven novels, a memoir, and two short story collections, including the 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Empire Falls. Known for assembling large casts of eccentric characters and sweeping multi-generational storylines, Russo brings to life hard-hit rural manufacturing towns and their inhabitants even as he explores the bewildering, painful complexities of family relationships. This critical study by Kathleen Drowne first recounts Russo s biography, then explores his novels chronologically, and ends with a chapter dedicated to his other works. Drowne invites readers to appreciate more fully Russo s evocative portrayals of hardscrabble working-class life in failing rural towns of the Northeast by identifying major themes and patterns present in Russo s work. In Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody s Fool, Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs, readers can see the primary recurring theme of Russo s work: the plight of deteriorating rural communities and the dramatic impact of that decline on their blue-collar inhabitants. A second important theme in Russo s fiction is the complicated relationship between emotionally scarred sons and their abusive, absent, or neglectful fathers; such relationships fuel the narratives of The Risk Pool, Nobody s Fool, Empire Falls, Bridge of Sighs, and That Old Cape Magic. Russo also utilizes large casts of realistic but highly eccentric characters worn-out shopkeepers and odd-jobbers, alcoholics, invalids, and ne er-do-wells whose lives are emblematic of both the dignity and the desperation of crumbling Rust Belt towns. Russo possesses, as one New York Times reviewer commented, that wonderfully unfashionable gift for effortless storytelling on a sweeping, multigenerational scale, which undoubtedly cements his place among his contemporaries in modern American literature. Drowne offers readers an insightful point of entrance into Russo s body of work to date."
Download or read book Nobody s Fool written by Richard Russo and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Trajectory written by Richard Russo and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2018-01-24 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Russo's characters in these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from many of his novels. In 'Horseman,' a professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday looms closer and closer. In 'Intervention,' a real estate agent facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward--or not. In 'Voice,' a semi-retired academic is conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the Venice Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatised student back in Massachusetts but encountering further complications in the maze of Venice. And in 'Milton and Marcus,' a lapsed novelist tries to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an aging, iconic star's mountaintop retreat in Wyoming. Each of these stories is shot through with the humour, wisdom and surprise for which Richard Russo has long been acclaimed as Trajectory continues to extend the breadth of his achievements.
Download or read book Elsewhere written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns to memoir in this "intimate and powerful" account (Chicago Tribune) of his lifelong bond with his high-strung, spirited mother—and the small town she spent her life trying to escape. Anyone familiar with Russo’s novels will recognize Gloversville—once famous for producing nine out of ten dress gloves in the United States. By the time Rick was born, ladies had stopped wearing gloves and Gloversville was on its way out. Jean Russo instilled in her son her dream of a better life elsewhere, a dream that prompted her to follow him across the country when he went to college. Their adventures and tribulations on that road trip were a preview of the hold his mother would continue to have on him as she kept trying desperately to change her life. Recounted with a clear-eyed mix of regret, nostalgia, and love, Elsewhere is a stirring tribute to the tenacious grip of the past.
Download or read book Triage written by Richard Russo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts Nonfiction Original One of the most valuable spaces for an artist is the inner life—the sacred place where, outside of the constraints of time and space, meaning is extracted from raw experience and fashioned into art. In this timely new essay, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo discusses the work writers do as they sift through experience and work to cultivate rich interior lives. For authors, this often involves performing triage, a constant assessment of events that helps determine what’s useful for a story and potentially enduring. But what is at stake when we perform triage? Is an artist’s interior life an act of generosity or selfishness? Reflecting on a year of reading and meditations on the nature of interiority brought up by a global pandemic and orders to stay at home, Triage is a candid and arresting look at the process that goes into creative work, by one of our most celebrated and bestselling novelists. An ebook short. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
Download or read book Ship of Fools written by Richard Paul Russo and published by Ace. This book was released on 2001 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A science fiction novel about a spaceship that has wandering in space for many years.
