Rating: 
Summary: Serious Humor
Review: Richard Russo is one of America's funniest literary novelists. This novel is based in small-town New England, and all readers who have ever lived in a small town anywhere in America will feel like they're in on one of the wittiest jokes they've ever heard the entire time they read this book. Some characters want out of the town but seem never to succeed. Others never think of leaving. Others have thought of it and want to stay. All of which creates a very real and very humorous tale of small town life.This story isn't small-minded in its small-town setting, nor is it simply humorous. Large personal issues that everyone, despite where he/she lives, must deal with are honestly and intelligently explored in this novel (e.g. a father's death, cancer, divorce, growing up, growing old, being poor, being rich then becoming poor). The only reason I rank this novel with 4 stars instead of 5 is that it does seem to be slightly too long. It is still a great read, but if it were 20-25 pages shorter, it would have kept the energy it started with. I don't mean to suggest that it ever becomes boring, but it came out of the gates at a sprint and slowed down a bit toward the end. In short, I advise reading this book. Despite any flaws it may have, it is better than most books I've read recently. It avoids being overly serious without becoming trite humor. I would also advise reading his novels Risk Pool and Straight Man which are also humorous and intelligent reads.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic Russo
Review: Richard Russo is simply one of the finest American authors writing today. I would take this a step further, and say he is one of the best, period. What is most remarkable about Russo is his ability to use the same characters over and over again in his books, yet still manage to make the story seem fresh and new every time. This is Russo's first book, but I was hard pressed to find any skill lacking. It is quite simply a thoroughly remarkable debut in every way. Although lacking the humor of "Nobody's Fool," it nearly matches "Empire Falls" in its humanity. As usual, this is a novel about a small town in New York and the various characters that inhabit it, including the mandatory Russo ne'er-do-well, an incompetant cop, and a beautiful ex-wife. There isn't necessarily an overriding plot, just a bunch of interweaving stories. There is comedy, tragedy, mystery, murder, and love, all told wonderfully through Russo's living and breathing characters. Although not as interesting and fully fleshed as Russo's characters in other novels, they are nonetheless more well written than most characters in modern American literature. I would categorize Russo's character work as comparable to Charles Dickens. High praise, but deserved all the same. If you are interested in starting to read Russo, this is as good a place to start as any, all his skills are on display. However, for Russo at his absolute finest, don't stop here, but move on to "Nobody's Fool" and "Empire Falls."
Rating:
Summary: Classic Russo
Review: Richard Russo is simply one of the finest American authors writing today. I would take this a step further, and say he is one of the best, period. What is most remarkable about Russo is his ability to use the same characters over and over again in his books, yet still manage to make the story seem fresh and new every time. This is Russo's first book, but I was hard pressed to find any skill lacking. It is quite simply a thoroughly remarkable debut in every way. Although lacking the humor of "Nobody's Fool," it nearly matches "Empire Falls" in its humanity. As usual, this is a novel about a small town in New York and the various characters that inhabit it, including the mandatory Russo ne'er-do-well, an incompetant cop, and a beautiful ex-wife. There isn't necessarily an overriding plot, just a bunch of interweaving stories. There is comedy, tragedy, mystery, murder, and love, all told wonderfully through Russo's living and breathing characters. Although not as interesting and fully fleshed as Russo's characters in other novels, they are nonetheless more well written than most characters in modern American literature. I would categorize Russo's character work as comparable to Charles Dickens. High praise, but deserved all the same. If you are interested in starting to read Russo, this is as good a place to start as any, all his skills are on display. However, for Russo at his absolute finest, don't stop here, but move on to "Nobody's Fool" and "Empire Falls."
Rating: 
Summary: Not a sleeper...a snoozer
Review: Russo's early work here takes you deep into the small-town life of Mohawk, NY, an industrial town with characters as lifeless and depressing as the dying industrial economy. There is no satire or tongues-in-cheeks here (see Rob Levandoski's delicious novel, "Serendipity Green" for a biting take) as Russo brings to life characters who go nowhere and do nothing. Russo painstakingly crafts each character like you knew him or her all of your life, placing you right in there as a resident of this upstate hamlet and joining your neighbors in gossiping behind their backs. However, this book is like a beautifully-painted picture -- rich in detail and depth and provocative at times, but like all paintings, it doesn't move. Throughout the whole book, nothing much really happens. There is a run-in with the police near the end of the book, but the incident is brief and hard-to-follow, and the resuming trial reads more like a misdemeanor trial than a sensational courtroom drama fit for a felony. In fact, the crime and trial are a small, relatively insignificant part of the book -- just like the lives of the characters. The inept, gambling drunk Dallas Younger is perhaps the only redeemable character in the book, and that's stretching it. The rest of the book's characters are a bunch of small-minded, petty and boring individuals whose self-doubts and fears are of no real consequence to anyone but themselves. Nothing really interesting happens to these people, although Russo does a magnificent job of making these bores seem realistic. I was looking for a rust-belt Faulkner from this guy, and I've heard better things about Russo's later books. I will give those books a try. His characterization is his strong suite; he is horrible at creating any action.
Rating:
Summary: The Richard Russo INexperience
Review: Some writers manage near-perfection on the first try, other take some practice--Russo is in the latter category and it shows in "Mohawk". The novel is not put together well at all; there are too many characters and too much going on in the story. It's a big disappointment after reading "Nobody's Fool" and "Empire Falls", but "Mohawk" is really where Russo started. There's no one story; every person in the town of Mohawk, New York has some sort of story. They all sort of interconnect, though I never thought the overall plot went much farther than to demonstrate the complexity of a small town. It would take too much time to go through and detail every sidebar story in the novel. That is the problem in a nutshell--too much stuff going on. Some of the characters like Dallas Younger and his sister-in-law are just extraneous and don't serve much purpose. Everyone from the diner owner to the bookie gets their life story detailed and in the end that's what makes it hard to discern any actual story; "Mohawk" is really a series of character sketches. The problem is that with so many characters, it's hard to pick out one or two to really care about. When I said earlier this story isn't put together well, I mean it really isn't put together well. Sometimes a chapter will have a couple paragraphs in the present, then flashback and not come back to the present until the next chapter. Other times there's a flashback for an entire chapter that really doesn't have anything to do with what was going on in the rest of the book. Then some chapters are only a page or two. The dialogue is strong in some parts, but clunky in others. A lot of events are skimmed over--one character dies with little explanation, while another has some kind of illness that I think she recovered from, but the detail was sketchy. There's also a needlessly high body count near the end of the book. My honest opinion is that this book is a mess and Russo would have done better to keep it hidden away to never see the light of day. If you're a Russo fan it's interesting to make comparisons between characters like Dallas Younger and the fathers in "Empire Falls" and "The Risk Pool" as well as Sully in "Nobody's Fool" or Randall Younger and the sons in "Risk Pool" and "Nobody's Fool" and the daughter in "Empire Falls". If you've never read Russo before, I would recommend any of those books and to just skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: The Richard Russo INexperience
Review: Some writers manage near-perfection on the first try, other take some practice--Russo is in the latter category and it shows in "Mohawk". The novel is not put together well at all; there are too many characters and too much going on in the story. It's a big disappointment after reading "Nobody's Fool" and "Empire Falls", but "Mohawk" is really where Russo started. There's no one story; every person in the town of Mohawk, New York has some sort of story. They all sort of interconnect, though I never thought the overall plot went much farther than to demonstrate the complexity of a small town. It would take too much time to go through and detail every sidebar story in the novel. That is the problem in a nutshell--too much stuff going on. Some of the characters like Dallas Younger and his sister-in-law are just extraneous and don't serve much purpose. Everyone from the diner owner to the bookie gets their life story detailed and in the end that's what makes it hard to discern any actual story; "Mohawk" is really a series of character sketches. The problem is that with so many characters, it's hard to pick out one or two to really care about. When I said earlier this story isn't put together well, I mean it really isn't put together well. Sometimes a chapter will have a couple paragraphs in the present, then flashback and not come back to the present until the next chapter. Other times there's a flashback for an entire chapter that really doesn't have anything to do with what was going on in the rest of the book. Then some chapters are only a page or two. The dialogue is strong in some parts, but clunky in others. A lot of events are skimmed over--one character dies with little explanation, while another has some kind of illness that I think she recovered from, but the detail was sketchy. There's also a needlessly high body count near the end of the book. My honest opinion is that this book is a mess and Russo would have done better to keep it hidden away to never see the light of day. If you're a Russo fan it's interesting to make comparisons between characters like Dallas Younger and the fathers in "Empire Falls" and "The Risk Pool" as well as Sully in "Nobody's Fool" or Randall Younger and the sons in "Risk Pool" and "Nobody's Fool" and the daughter in "Empire Falls". If you've never read Russo before, I would recommend any of those books and to just skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: Mohawk
Review: This is an outstanding novel, one that has well stood the test of time, even when compared to the author's excellent more recent work. All the "2-star" reviewers on this page ought to do themselves a favor and re-read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Waxing the hyperbole ...
Review: Well, here goes ... I am an educated man, vis a vis the arts. Humbly, I am able to deconstruct Hyden, Mozart, Bach. I have studied art (and am, again, humbly, a craftsman myself) to be able to understand the brushwork, composition, and lighting of Monet, Hopper, Inness. But I'll be damned if I can begin to comprehend how a genius novelist is able to do what he does. Richard Russo is in the company of John Steinbeck, Wallace Stegner, Charles Dickens. Geez, I've FINALLY gotten around to reading "Mohawk", after marvelling at "Nobody's Fool" and "The Risk Pool". Folks: here is the greatest living American author. I'm gonna blanch at all this when I sober up, but here it is: do yourself a BIG favor, read Richard Russo.
Rating:
Summary: A Sign of Things to Come
Review: With his Pulitzer Prize winning and best selling novel Empire Falls, Richard Russo has become a well-known author. In Mohawk, his first novel, we see, if somewhat imperfectly, the writer he would become. Like his other novels, Mohawk is the story of a small town in the northeastern part of the U.S. The town - in this case Mohawk - is a place on the wane as the industry that fueled it peters out. In this story, we follow the adventures of Dallas Younger, his ex-wife Anne and their son Randall in the late '60s and early '70s. Dallas lives a life of general irresponsibility and likes it that way. Anne pines away for her cousin's husband, a wheelchair-bound man who she sleeps with every twenty years or so. Randall has his own issues to deal with including his efforts to evade the draft. As with Russo's other stories, the characters are more important than the plot, and he is able to make them compelling enough that we want to keep reading. Compared with his other novels, this one is rather serious, although there is some humor. This novel is good but not as great as his other books; in a way, this book is like an exhibition game before the regular season; we get a general feel for what Russo does but it is still just warming up. For example, in Dallas, we see the prototype for the deeper Sully in Nobody's Fool. Other elements of this story are revisited in his other stories. I would recommend this book, but don't judge Russo by this story. He's just getting warmed up here.
Rating:
Summary: A Sign of Things to Come
Review: With his Pulitzer Prize winning and best selling novel Empire Falls, Richard Russo has become a well-known author. In Mohawk, his first novel, we see, if somewhat imperfectly, the writer he would become. Like his other novels, Mohawk is the story of a small town in the northeastern part of the U.S. The town - in this case Mohawk - is a place on the wane as the industry that fueled it peters out. In this story, we follow the adventures of Dallas Younger, his ex-wife Anne and their son Randall in the late '60s and early '70s. Dallas lives a life of general irresponsibility and likes it that way. Anne pines away for her cousin's husband, a wheelchair-bound man who she sleeps with every twenty years or so. Randall has his own issues to deal with including his efforts to evade the draft. As with Russo's other stories, the characters are more important than the plot, and he is able to make them compelling enough that we want to keep reading. Compared with his other novels, this one is rather serious, although there is some humor. This novel is good but not as great as his other books; in a way, this book is like an exhibition game before the regular season; we get a general feel for what Russo does but it is still just warming up. For example, in Dallas, we see the prototype for the deeper Sully in Nobody's Fool. Other elements of this story are revisited in his other stories. I would recommend this book, but don't judge Russo by this story. He's just getting warmed up here.
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