Nobody's Fool

Rating:
Summary: They don't get any better than this.
Review: Thank God for Amazon. I discovered Richard Russo while looking at reviews of Moo by Jane Smiley. A reviewer put me onto Straight Man, and that's how I got to Nobody's Fool.

I liked Straight Man very much. Then I went on to The Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool, which I read within a few months of each other about a year ago. Looking back it's hard to separate the two because of their similar setting and characters.

Both are wonderful. If there is the perfect novel, both The Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool are it. One night while I was reading Nobody's Fool in bed, I finished a paragraph and put the book down on my chest thinking that I had actually been touched by God; it was that unusual. I felt that I had experienced perfection. That has only happened to me once before.

Russo's chracters are "ordinary;" some would call them losers. Russo clearly loves them, and that is the wonder of these two books. When I tried to describe Russo's writing to an author friend, she said that a good writer leads his readers by the hand, but she said it sounded in this case as if Russo were leading his readers by the soul. I couldn't have said it better.

Please read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Russo's Best (so far)
Review: The setting is vintage Russo. A small, depressed town that time forgot where people tend to go through the motions of life, clinging to the hope of an economic miracle that never seems to happen. A coworker told me that this is the real America, there are more towns like this than there are the bustling big cities. Russo's towns come to life with his vivid descriptions and three dimensional characters.

In "Nobody's Fool", set in the mid-1980's in upstate New York, we meet Sully, a mostly harmless guy who seems to raise the ire of about everybody he meets, with the exception of his best friend and his landlady. True, Sully can be a real pain in the neck, but he's oh so fun to read about, what with his troubles with his dad's ghost, his distant son, his sometime employer, his slow best friend, and the subplot about a spastic Doberman and the volley over a stolen snowblower. I could go on and on, but it's too complex to compress into a short review.

Russo has a way of making you wonder exactly how things will turn out for our protagonists, since many of them paint themselves into a corner (see also Russo's "Straight Man".) This book is a thick read, but I wished it had gone on even longer. I did not find myself wishing that the book was about 100 pages shorter, or that there was a better interplay of action and dialogue. This book is Russo at top form, and it shows. Every page in this book is a delight and despite the heft, the story is over much too soon. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: One of the finest American novels
Review: There's something about this book... It grows on you. I've read it once and listened to the unabridged audiobook version, and it has a strange power.

Nothing much happens in this novel, other than a few days in the life of Donald Sullivan, Sully, and the people who rotate around him in the small town of Bath, NY. But there is an Everyman quality in Sully's lackadaisical attitude toward life, his easy-going nature, his friendliness and grumpiness. He's the kind of person you'd never notice in a diner, but he's deeply ingrained in the life of this small community.

Richard Russo has a talent for developing characters, through their actions and the subtle flashbacks that talk about their pasts. Sully is the quintessential Russo character, and is charming and amiable, even if he can be a pain in the ass. But like all humans, he has good and bad qualities, and this book, more than anything, shows us how human being act in good and not so good ways.

This is such a good book it would go on my desert island list.

Rating:
Summary: Hometown Characters
Review: This book tells the story of a 60-year-old ne're-do-well who goes by the name of Sully. Sully does odd construction jobs in a small town in upstate New York, the very town where he grew up. His childhood friends, ex-wife, and high school flames all live in town, and in this story, he continues to annoy them as he always has. The town is slowing changing, though, and Sully with it. Sully certainly doesn't want to change, but between a knee injury that makes continuing his construction work dubious, an aging landlady, and the return of his son, whose marriage is failing, Sully reluctantly begins to admit that he's going to have to make some adjustments to the status quo.

I've run across Sully and his friends in my travels. Cranky, hypocritical, tough, and tender, they are the perpetrators of some of the funniest antics of family oral histories--that is, as long as you weren't on the receiving end of their ire at the time. You'll get a few laughs out of this book for sure, and it may even strike home.


Rating:
Summary: Comfortable Like An Old Shoe
Review: This is a novel of amiable drunks, lovable ne'er-do-wells, eccentric old ladies and one slightly-paralyzed dog. Russo has a skill for writing likable characters -- even when they're irresponsible and self-destructive -- and after a while you get used to their being around. When the book ends it feels like losing touch with a bunch of old friends.

I'm not sure Russo's writing is the Great American Novel (or anything close) but it's a pleasant diversion for sure.

Rating:
Summary: Great book from a great author
Review: This was the last (out of 4) books by Richard Russo I've read, and it's difficult which to say which one is best, but it's probably a close race between 'Nobody's Fool' and 'The Risk Pool' - but 'Straight Man' and 'Mohawk' are great too! As someone else said, Russo's character development ranks up there with Anne Tyler, if indeed he's not even better. 'Nobody's Fool' is peopled with all kinds of great and interesting characters. For such an 'ordinary guy', Sully is pretty complex,

actually. Rub and Hattie are hoots, Sully's landlady is wonderful, and the list goes on. The movie is pretty good too, but as usual, the book is better - it's hard to get much of a 550-page book into a movie! Buy this book.