Russo’s version of the good old-fashioned comic novel is the gold standard, full of heart and dexterous storytelling.
Back to North Bath, New York, for a third round of misadventures, tomfoolery, and personal growth.
The demise of Donald “Sully” Sullivan, Russo’s beloved main character, in Everybody's Fool (2016), is no obstacle to the success of the author's return visit to the benighted North Bath, though at its opening the town is put out of its misery by being officially dissolved, its environs annexed to its bright and shiny neighbor, Schuyler Springs. Despite his death, Sully casts a long shadow over the doings of the remaining population: Peter, his college professor son; Rub, his old sidekick; Chief of Police Douglas Raymer, his erstwhile nemesis; Ruth, his longtime paramour—all constantly find themselves recalling his instructions and example. Though the closing of the North Bath police department puts Raymer out of a job, when a body is found at the long-shuttered Sans Souci hotel, he is sent to investigate by his former employee and on-again, off-again girlfriend: the new chief of police of Schuyler Springs, Charice Bond. Charice is attractive and Black, while middle-aged Raymer looks like “he and the Pillsbury Doughboy might have a common ancestor,” but Charice’s twin brother, Jerome, is on hand to teach Raymer a few things he needs to know about the Black experience. In other news, a third generation of Sullivan shows up in town—Peter's son Thomas, from whom he has been long estranged. Thomas looks a lot like his brother Will, the only one of the boys Peter raised, now abroad on a Fulbright scholarship as a result of advantages that Thomas and his younger brother lacked and about which they are bitterly resentful. Another three-generation plotline involves the thorny relationships among Ruth, her daughter, Janey, and her granddaughter, Tina. Bad cops, bigotry, partner violence, nefarious schemes, and confusing therapy sessions aside, almost all of the characters experience significant improvements in their self-concepts, relationships, and circumstances. The king is dead, long live the king!
Russo’s version of the good old-fashioned comic novel is the gold standard, full of heart and dexterous storytelling.Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593317891
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
A flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy (The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend—the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. There are enough traumas here to fall an average-sized mental ward, but the biggie centers around Luke, who uses the skills learned as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam to fight a guerrilla war against the installation of a nuclear power plant in Colleton and is killed by the authorities. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. There may be a barely-glimpsed smaller novel buried in all this succotash (Tom's marriage and life as a football coach), but it's sadly overwhelmed by the book's clumsy central narrative device (flashback ad infinitum) and Conroy's pretentious prose style: ""There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1986
ISBN: 0553381547
Page Count: 686
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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