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In this entrancing first collection of stories, a master storyteller focuses on a fresh and fascinating range of human behaviour, revealing himself as an even more versatile and accomplished writer than his acclaimed novels have shown.
As with all Russo's characters, we warm to these newcomers almost in spite of themselves. In the title story, a septuagenarian nun resolutely invades the narrator's college writing workshop with an incredible saga; a seasoned Hollywood moviemaker uncovers a 25-year-old flame he never knew he'd harboured; a precious fifth-grader puzzles over life, love and baseball as he watches his parents' marriage dissolve; another child is forced into a harrowing cross-country escape; and an elderly couple rediscover the power - and misery - of their relationship during a long-awaited retreat to a hurricane-swept resort island.
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"A master at examining subtly, from a different angle each time, the tensions that arise in long-term relationships" (The Times )
"Russo here confirms that he is equally skilled at shorter fiction that engagingly and shrewdly achieves through subtle humour exactly what it sets out to do" (Irish Times )
"Russo has more than a dash of style and an almost infallible technique" (Times Literary Supplement )
"This volume is the work of a consummate storyteller...his writing displays a warmth of wit and humour, along with an ability to inject drama into a narrative" (Irish Independent )
Book Description
'He is brilliant...one of the more beguiling chroniclers of his times' - The Times (20030303)
I love Richard Russo - in fact Empire Falls is one of my top ten 'desert island' books, but this collection was disappointing. I found it difficult to engage with the characters, as much as you can in a short story, and found most of the stories uninspiring. The first story, The Whores Child, is good, but the rest kind of filter away till the end.
If you want to read the best Russo - get Empire Falls or Mohawk, they are both fantastic reads. But give this a miss. Unless you are a monumental fan of short stories.
Russo's first collection of short fiction isn't quite in the same league as his novels but still doesn't disappoint. In these stories he displays a wider range of concerns than the depictions of "blue-collar America" for which he is rightly famed. Two stories really stand out as being amongst his finest work - "Joy Ride" and the magnificent "Mysteries of Linwood Hart". Curiously both of these focus on young boys and their encounters with the larger world - something Russo has previously proved he can do in "The Risk Pool". Three of the stories focus on middle-aged academics / writers and , perhaps because these focus on the world Russo presumably now inhabits rather than the one he came from, they are the weaker stories in an otherwise fine collection. In summary the book is a mixed bag ( though none of it bad ) but it has to be worth the cover price just for "The Mysteries of Linwood Hart".
