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A review by mschlat
Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
4.0
As I settled into this read, I marvelled at how good Russo is at something so critical: the expository paragraph. There's plenty of dialogue and action in the book, but so much of the writing is Russo describing the mental states of his many, many characters. It's hard for me to find another example of an author who so clearly explains why his creations think and act the way they do AND does it so entertainingly. (There were multiple times I wanted to read my wife a great sentence, except I got caught up in the next sentence and the sentence after that and the sentence after that...)
The book covers a few winter months in Bath, New York with a major focus on Sully, a sixty-year-old man who usually takes odd jobs and construction work and is starting to face 1) some of the limitations of his life and 2) the beginning of one of his "silly seasons", where his contrarian nature and lack of specific regret for anything leads to more and more trouble. But it's also a story of his landlady Miss Beryl and his best friend Rub and his frenemy Carl and about a dozen other people in the small town. And overall, the story is more about the journey through each of their lives than any one precipitating event (although there's more than a few of them). It's a time capsule of sorts, with Russo preserving everyone's state of mind as they each face some crisis (major or minor) that forces them to examine the web of relationships around them.
A few notes on the negative side. One, there is some use of the n-word (which I wasn't expecting) which jarred me out of the story. Two, there's a focus on male sexuality that runs throughout the book that a time or two went over the edge for me, especially with one female character near the end of the book who seems to be just a vehicle for male sexual satisfaction. There's a juvenile approach to sex on the part of many of the male characters, and while it's clearly knowingly juvenile on Russo's part, the repetition was too much by the end of the read.
Still, with the above, this was a very good reading experience for me, and I will probably search out some more Russo.
The book covers a few winter months in Bath, New York with a major focus on Sully, a sixty-year-old man who usually takes odd jobs and construction work and is starting to face 1) some of the limitations of his life and 2) the beginning of one of his "silly seasons", where his contrarian nature and lack of specific regret for anything leads to more and more trouble. But it's also a story of his landlady Miss Beryl and his best friend Rub and his frenemy Carl and about a dozen other people in the small town. And overall, the story is more about the journey through each of their lives than any one precipitating event (although there's more than a few of them). It's a time capsule of sorts, with Russo preserving everyone's state of mind as they each face some crisis (major or minor) that forces them to examine the web of relationships around them.
A few notes on the negative side. One, there is some use of the n-word (which I wasn't expecting) which jarred me out of the story. Two, there's a focus on male sexuality that runs throughout the book that a time or two went over the edge for me, especially with one female character near the end of the book who seems to be just a vehicle for male sexual satisfaction. There's a juvenile approach to sex on the part of many of the male characters, and while it's clearly knowingly juvenile on Russo's part, the repetition was too much by the end of the read.
Still, with the above, this was a very good reading experience for me, and I will probably search out some more Russo.