From Powells.com
Staff Pick
While any new book from Richard Russo is a cause for celebration, to have one that revisits the characters from a beloved classic feels like a gift from the literary gods. Everybody’s Fool returns to North Bath, New York, the setting for Russo’s breakout novel from 1993, Nobody’s Fool. No one writes better about the quirks, petty jealousies, hard times, humor, and heartbreak of small-town America. Everybody’s Fool is good-old-fashioned storytelling at its finest! Recommended By Shawn D., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Richard Russo, at the very top of his game, now returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and the characters who made Nobody’s Fool (1993) a “confident, assured novel [that] sweeps the reader up,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle back then. “Simple as family love, yet nearly as complicated.” Or, as The Boston Globe put it, “a big, rambunctious novel with endless riffs and unstoppable human hopefulness.”
The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is staring down a VA cardiologist’s estimate that he has only a year or two left, and it’s hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years...the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren’t still best friends ..Sully’s son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure (and now a regretful one). We also enjoy the company of Doug Raymer, the chief of police who’s obsessing primarily over the identity of the man his wife might’ve been about to run off with, before dying in a freak accident...Bath’s mayor, the former academic Gus Moynihan, whose wife problems are, if anything, even more pressing...and then there’s Carl Roebuck, whose lifelong run of failing upward might now come to ruin. And finally, there’s Charice Bond—a light at the end of the tunnel that is Chief Raymer’s office—as well as her brother, Jerome, who might well be the train barreling into the station.
Everybody’s Fool is filled with humor, heart, hard times and people you can’t help but love, possibly because their various faults make them so stridently human. This is classic Russo—and a crowning achievement from one of the greatest storytellers of our time.
Review
"Elegiac but never sentimental.... Russo’s compassionate heart is open to the sorrows, and yes, the foolishness of this lonely world, but also the humor, friendship and love that abide." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Russo hits his trademark trifecta: satisfying, hilarious, and painlessly profound." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Triumphant...Russo's reunion with these beloved characters is genius: silly slapstick and sardonic humor play out in a rambling, rambunctious story that poignantly emphasizes that particular brand of loyalty and acceptance that is synonymous with small-town living." Carol Haggas, Booklist (Starred Review)
Synopsis
A New York Times 2016 Notable Book An immediate national best seller and instant classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. Richard Russo returns to North Bath--"a town where dishonesty abounds, everyone misapprehends everyone else and half the citizens are half-crazy" (The New York Times)--and the characters who made Nobody's Fool a beloved choice of book clubs everywhere. Everybody's Fool is classic Russo, filled with humor, heart, hard times, and people you can't help but love, possibly because their various faults make them so human.
Everybody's Fool picks up roughly a decade since we were last with Miss Beryl and Sully on New Year's Eve 1984. The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is staring down a VA cardiologist's estimate that he has only a year or two left, and it's hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years . . . the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren't still best friends . . . Sully's son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure (and now a regretful one). We also enjoy the company of Doug Raymer, the chief of police who's obsessing primarily over the identity of the man his wife might've been about to run off with, before dying in a freak accident . . . Bath's mayor, the former academic Gus Moynihan, whose wife problems are, if anything, even more pressing . . . and then there's Carl Roebuck, whose lifelong run of failing upward might now come to ruin. And finally, there's Charice Bond--a light at the end of the tunnel that is Chief Raymer's office--as well as her brother, Jerome, who might well be the train barreling into the station.
A crowning achievement--"like hopping on the last empty barstool surrounded by old friends" (Entertainment Weekly)--from one of the greatest storytellers of our time.
About the Author
Richard Russo is the author of seven previous novels; two collections of stories; and Elsewhere, a memoir. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which like Nobody’s Fool was adapted to film, in a multiple-award-winning HBO miniseries.
Richard Russo on PowellsBooks.Blog
Imagining the lives of others allows the writer an escape from his real-world self, an escape that isn’t so different from the one readers feel when they “lose themselves” in a good story. For a time both are allowed to forget a reality to which the self is central. While dreaming the fictional dream, we ourselves simply cease to matter...
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