reading notes

by Richard Russo

ISBN: 0375726012

Russo’s stories generally revolve around variously damaged men: they are recovering from surgery, from divorce, from grief, or in stories like “Buoyancy”, the passage of time. He writes about real things and the ways in which they work out or don’t work out or don’t happen at all. Many of these characters wouldn’t have been out of place in the world of Empire Falls, Russo’s last (and excellent) novel.

This collection contains seven stories. Some are stronger than others, but none is a clunker. “The Whore’s Child” succeeds despite the fact the narrator is a creative writing teacher and his most noted student is a nun. Someone with less talent couldn’t handle that setup without the story falling ridiculously apart; Russo brings it to a fitting (if writerly) end. That is something he does consistently — make you feel that you are reading a story, instead of, say, watching a scene or two in lives unfold. Because he handles his characters and the situations they find themselve in with a realism that isn’t forced, you don’t really care. Well, I didn’t.

“Monhegan Light” brings an unexpected twist on the them of betrayal; “The Farther You Go” is about more than exterior distances. In “Buoyancy” The last and longest story, “The Mysteries of Linwood Hart” presents the convincingly strange interior life of a ten year old boy whose parents’ marriage is in crisis. “Joy Ride” and “Poison” didn’t work for me as well as the rest did, probably because I didn’t have enough sympathy for the wife in the first and either of the writers in the second.

Russo is a writer whose work is worth spending time with. Recommended.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2003 at 8:39 pm and is filed under fiction.