All of Richard Russo’s book have enough in common that I’m always looking forward to the next one. The downside is that I also already know what it’s about, more or less.
Russo writes so well that I sometimes feel guilty reading him. An author who knows how to tell a story like that can’t be serious, right? I haven’t yet come across any book by him I didn’t like, and I’ve re-read so of them. The one I’ve read three times now is The Risk Pool, which recounts his childhood in upstate New York, growing up with a partly absent, sometimes violent and always hard-drinking father. Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool are great novels too. Nobody’s Fool was turned into a movie starring Paul Newman that I’m re-watching every few years and that has just the right amount of sentimentality and snow for the holiday season.
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[…] Mid-way through reading this I paused and thought, “This is better than anything that I’ve read in a long time. I wonder who it’s by?” An expletive may have preceded that. I scrolled back up to the top of the page, and it turns out it’s by Richard Russo. […]
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[…] and Art, Richard Russo‘s newest book, is a collection of his essays. It came out only a few days ago, and since I […]
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