By: Richard Russo Publisher: Knopf Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Knopf Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 544 Publication Date: September 25, 2007 Release Date: September 25, 2007
Six years after the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning Empire Falls, Richard Russo returns with a novel that expands even further his widely heralded achievement.
Louis Charles (“Lucy”) Lynch has spent all his sixty years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for forty of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he’s had plenty of reasons not to be—chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an “empire” of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation.
Lucy and Sarah are also preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy, where his oldest friend, a renowned painter, has exiled himself far from anything they’d known in childhood. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the “history” he’s writing of his hometown and family. And with his story interspersed with that of Noonan, the native son who’d fled so long ago, the destinies building up around both of them (and Sarah, too) are relentless, constantly surprising, and utterly revealing.
Bridge of Sighs is classic Russo, coursing with small-town rhythms and the claims of family, yet it is brilliantly enlarged by an expatriate whose motivations and experiences—often contrary, sometimes not—prove every bit as mesmerizing as they resonate through these richly different lives. Here is a town, as well as a world, defined by magnificent and nearly devastating contradictions.
Amazon.com: Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Richard Russo's first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, Bridge of Sighs is a typically stunning portrait of three small town families struggling--like the town itself--to strike a balance between obsessively embracing their own history or shunning it entirely, with devastating consequences along both paths. Bridge of Sighs is pure Russo: funny, heartbreaking, and ringing completely true. --Jon Foro
Bridge of Sighs It took a long time to get into this story which was very slow moving. Not as good as Nobody's Fool or Empire Falls!
A long slog to read Having thoroughly enjoyed Empire Falls, I was expecting this to be written in the same style. While reading Empire Falls, there were many times when I literally laughed out loud. The way Russo described his characters and their situations was often very comical. Additionally, every sentence was finely crafted and was written in exactly the right way to convey what he was trying to describe. The plot was almost irrelevant as the writing was just so perfect that it was a joy to read and a sorrow to have finished it.
In contrast, I found little if any humor in Bridge of Sighs. The writing style was tedious and dull. As other reviewers have noted, it takes a very long time to get to the actual plot points which have been telegraphed in not so subtle ways. Despite the length, he fails to devote enough space to how Bobby changed from a small town kid to a world class painter. He also resorts to using the tool of a 'deus ex machina' (that he himself criticizes) by introducing a new character near the end.
It is hard to believe that this was written by the same author as Empire Falls. I suppose a lesser author would have completed something totally unreadable as compared to this which, although readable, was disappointing.
Nostalgic novel with literary ambitions Richard Russo's first novel since EMPIRE FALLS lists heavily toward nostalgia. BRIDGE OF SIGHS is set in Thomaston, New York. There is a working class neighborhood, the West Side; a middle class neighborhood, the East Side; and the Borough where the owner of the tannery lives.
Louis C. "Lucy" Lynch lives in all three at some point in his life. His father is a milkman who starts out working on "The Hill" the black neighborhood, then moves up to the East side when he gets a route serving the Borough. When the A&P moves into town, he sees the handwriting on the wall and buys the corner store, Ikey Lubin's, without his wife's permission. Tessa is not happy and refuses to have anything to do with the place, except working on the books. Ikey Lubin's is so significant in the story it's almost a character in its own right.
BRIDGE OF SIGHS has a Milton-esque flavor to it. Milton once wrote two poems, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, asking who is better off, the contemplative man or the happy man. Lucy's father embodies the happy man. He has a good opinion of everybody and thinks everything will eventually turn out for the best. Russo juggles time throughout the novel. Lucy is telling the story as a sixty-year-old, looking back on his friendship with his neighbor Bobby Marconi, one of the popular boys who doesn`t always return Lucy`s friendship. Lucy takes after his father. He's happiest in Thomaston, running by now three convenience stores, one in each part of town. Bobby has become a famous painter, living in Italy, but he's not happy. He has sexual escapades with his friends' wives, his painting has lost its thrill until he paints Sarah, Lucy's future wife. As a girl Sarah was in love with both of them. Russo keeps you guessing as to what exactly went on in that relationship, as he does with Tessa and Big Lou's brother Dec, who works at Ikey Lubin's as a butcher.
Another compelling character is Sarah's father who works at the high school as an English teacher. He's working on a thousand-page, single-spaced novel during the summer when Sarah goes to live with her mother in Long Island. He smokes in class, handpicks his students for reasons other than academics, and seems to be begging to be fired.
If you don't like omniscient novels you may have a problem with BRIDGE OF SIGHS. There is a lot of narrative (telling). Russo gets inside the head of one of his characters and stays there for pages. But he's really good at it, so this may be a moot point. Russo also leaves several questions unanswered. For instance, why are Sarah (an excellent artist in her own right) and Bobby painting the same picture?
Empathetic characters, engaging story I liked this book even better than Empire Falls, another of Russo's great books. Russo captures small-town life and small-town ambition perfectly and believably. The artist character (Bobby Noonan) is less believable than some of the other characters but still well drawn. Noonan's fate at the end of the book seems a bit like a cop-out, but the book is still engaging and well-written throughout. Russo is a master at creating empathetic characters.
The only Richard Russo book I haven't loved... I've read and loved every one of Russo's books (except his book of short stories) - and could hardly wait to get my hands on this one. I enjoyed parts of it, but it dragged on and on, and after reading a short while I couldn't endure it anymore. It got to be more of a chore than a pleasure. I hate not finishing a book...so I scanned through as much as I could before seeing the rest was just more of the same. I still love you and your large volume of work though, Richard, and will certainly scoop up your next book and give it a try.
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