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Bridge of Sighs Richard Russo 9780375414954 Books

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Bridge of Sighs Richard Russo 9780375414954 Books

I read a lot, and I read the new best sellers. I'm in a hurry and know time is limited, so I read as many as I can, enjoy and move along. But every now and then I come across one I've missed by an author I liked. Such was Bridge of Sighs. And then...I slow down, way down, to contemplate the development and richness of characters, and the poignancy and irony so beautifully written. I took days to read this one because there was much to think about -- all that love and hate, the missed and seized opportunities of life. This is one to savor -- It's a wonderful book, one to remember and recommend.


Tags : Bridge of Sighs [Richard Russo] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Six years after the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning Empire Falls, </i> 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,Richard Russo,Bridge of Sighs,Alfred A. Knopf,0375414959,City and town life;Fiction.,Italy;Fiction.,New York (State);Fiction.,City and town life,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Literary,Friendship,Lifestyles,Literary

Bridge of Sighs Richard Russo 9780375414954 Books Reviews

The main narrative is an autobiography of Louis C Lynch, who is known as Lucy and is such a nice guy that he is suspected of being gay. This is interspersed with story from the view point of his wife Sarah and his old friend Noonan, who has escaped Thomaston, their benighted small town in upstate New York, to become a big time artist. Lou's autobiography goes back for most of the time to their teenage years in Thomaston, a place blighted by oncogenic decaying industries and racist, homophobic bullies.
It is strongly plotted and an absorbing read but I was a little disappointed. Because of the setting and the literary plaudits, including a Pulitzer Prize, that put him in the category of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford and Joyce Carol Oates, I had been expecting dirty realism and minimalism, but I found Russo to be long-winded. He uses lengthy stretches of interior monolog instead of dialog and does a lot of telling instead of showing. Clichés abound. Characters speak, on more than one occasion, "with a wry smile." The black characters, and only the black characters, have their dialect rendered phonetically, with speech such as "Lease you ain't loss your mind completely"
REally liked the story, but his style of writing, going chapter to chapter, back and forth in time is confusing at times. Liked the way it incorporated childhood, young adult and adult, senior adult lives of all the characters.
I tire of hearing "this is a page turner" because usually I discover that I can actually put the page-turner books down for a few minutes. Well, that has not been true for Bridge of Sighs. I have read hundreds of novels, and this is the one I would most want with me were I washed up by a hurricane--likely here in Miami Beach--onto some piece of lonely island. This is truly brilliant writing with some of the most delicious characters I have ever met. The journey toward so many is so well worth it. I an English teacher, now teaching college writing. So I was somewhat interested in getting to meet Mr. Berg, a man who is alluded to occasionally during the first three hundred-plus pages (yes, this is a long novel). He is writing a novel (I have done that). But what I met and what I expected to meet was such a surprise. My stomach hurt when I entered his classroom--Honors English--with the cast of characters I had come to know and love, Lou (Lucy), Sarah (Mr. Berg's daughter), Perry, Three Mock, and Noonan among others. Oh, my, I have been outrageous I suspect in the classroom. But Berg way out does me.
The novel is set in a real town on Long Island (the name is anyway), but transported to up-state New York. It is a story of complex people who live both simple and complex lives. And I did not want once to put this novel down.
Bridge of Sighs mainly reveals youthful experiences in a small northeastern town in, I guess, the 50s. The story focuses on the Lynch family and, eventually, their neighborhood store, a center of stability that serves as a refuge for distressed adults and confused kids. Russo portrays a modern slant, with males either clueless or fearless and females the sources of intelligence and common sense.

Though the book occasionally jumps chronologically, character development is deep and keeps the reader interested. In fact, the ongoing life of the main character, Lucy, is so engrossing, the diversions to other character viewpoints are rather distracting, such as Noonan in Venice, which seems without relevance.

Overall, I found descriptions wordy but there are some gems, like Russo's two fallacies of marriage "the ridiculous notion that people knew what they wanted," and "that what people thought they wanted today was what they'd want tomorrow."
A town where everyone knew far too much about everyone else? A manufacturing town with failing factories? Where social class might as well have been engraved on your forehead at birth?
If so, you'll know every character in this book, every street, every neighborhood, every teacher, every cop, every familial quirk.
I grew up in such a town, and except for the specific plot elements, this is a revealing and poignant and accurate portrayal.
Having read most of Russo's work, I knew I would get an intelligent analysis of human behavior with wry observations about the characters. I got that. But I missed some of the humor evidenced in other novels. This has humor in it for certain—the kind that elicits a smile or an imperceptible nod of the head while reading. Russo can (and obviously has) hit a higher gear on the humor scale drawing a good laugh at futile efforts, forgotten promises, bizarre personal quirks, or an outrageous moral dilemma. Bridge of Sighs doesn't provide that sort of humor for me and I missed it. However, it is so well written and so thoughtful that I still gave it 5 stars. There was a point in the story that I would have rated it lower because I grew tired of all the negativity and lost causes. But then Russo would make an observation and I was right back on track applauding his insight.
I read a lot, and I read the new best sellers. I'm in a hurry and know time is limited, so I read as many as I can, enjoy and move along. But every now and then I come across one I've missed by an author I liked. Such was Bridge of Sighs. And then...I slow down, way down, to contemplate the development and richness of characters, and the poignancy and irony so beautifully written. I took days to read this one because there was much to think about -- all that love and hate, the missed and seized opportunities of life. This is one to savor -- It's a wonderful book, one to remember and recommend.