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This dazzling collection of four stories features characters bound together by their parallel moments of reckoning with their pasts—and proves the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls is also a master of the short story. “Beautiful…. Will abruptly break your heart.” —The New York Times
The characters in these four expansive stories are a departure from the blue-collar denizens that populate so many of Richard Russo’s novels. In “Horseman,” a young professor confronts an undergraduate plagiarist—as well as her own regrets. In “Intervention,” a realtor facing a serious medical prognosis finds himself in his late father’s shadow. “Voice” gives us a semiretired academic who is conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the Venice Biennale. And “Milton and Marcus” takes us into a lapsed novelist’s attempt to rekindle his screenwriting career—a career that depends wholly, at a crucial moment, on two Hollywood icons (one living, one dead). Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
This dazzling collection of four stories features characters bound together by their parallel moments of reckoning with their pasts—and proves the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls is also a master of the short story. “Beautiful…. Will abruptly break your heart.” —The New York Times
The characters in these four expansive stories are a departure from the blue-collar denizens that populate so many of Richard Russo’s novels. In “Horseman,” a young professor confronts an undergraduate plagiarist—as well as her own regrets. In “Intervention,” a realtor facing a serious medical prognosis finds himself in his late father’s shadow. “Voice” gives us a semiretired academic who is conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the Venice Biennale. And “Milton and Marcus” takes us into a lapsed novelist’s attempt to rekindle his screenwriting career—a career that depends wholly, at a crucial moment, on two Hollywood icons (one living, one dead). Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the bookIntervention
Thirty-two degrees, according to the dashboard thermometer, so . . . maybe. In warm weather the garage door duti-fully lumbered up and over the section of bent track, but below freezing it invariably stuck and you had to get out, remote in hand, and manually yank the door past the spot where it caught. Within a few degrees of freezing, though, it was anybody’s guess, so Ray pressed the remote and opened the driver’s-side door, pre-pared to get out if he needed to. When the door shuddered past the critical point and up along the ceiling, he closed the car door again, noticing as he did so that Paula, his wife, was watching him with her O ye of little faith expression.
Pulling inside, he made sure to leave her enough room to get out. Two-car was how the garage had been described when they bought the house. Ray, himself a realtor and all too familiar with such dubious representations, had squinted at the phrase in the listing information, then at the garage itself. It was probably true it could hold two small sedans, but with anything larger you’d need to pull the first car in at an angle to have enough space for the second vehicle. He’d considered calling Connie, the seller’s agent, on this, but he liked her, in particular how she confessed right up front that she’d just gotten her license. She seemed genu-inely terrified of saying the wrong thing, of disclosing something that by law wasn’t supposed to be mentioned or of failing to dis-close something else that was mandatory. She’d gone into real estate, she claimed, because she liked helping people find what they wanted, and she seemed blithely innocent of the fact that most people had no idea what that was, especially the ones who were defiantly confident they did. Ray doubted she would last long and wasn’t surprised when, a year later, he ran into her and was told she’d embarked upon a degree in social work.
Anyway, Paula had loved the house and didn’t want to see the not-quite-two-car garage as a problem, though she conceded they’d probably have to find someplace else for the lawn mower and the other stuff they usually stuck in there. She argued they’d be okay if they went slow and paid attention, especially at backing out. When for the record Ray expressed grave doubts about this as a long-term solution, she asked, “What are you saying? That we’re careless people?”
Well, no, but they were human and there was no app for that. A person could be careful most of the time, maybe eighty percent, if you really worked at it. The way Ray saw it, human nature was flawed, almost by definition, pretty much a hundred percent of the time, which left a sizable margin for error. For nearly a year, though, they waged a successful battle against such cynicism, until one day Ray misjudged and sheared off his side-view mirror. A month later Paula—okay, okay, she admitted, she’d been in a hurry—backed into the metal track the garage door slid on, warping the runner and taking out a taillight. The two acci-dents, in such close proximity, represented a genuine I told you so moment, but Ray’d given it a pass. He and Paula had been mar-ried for close to thirty years, thanks in large part to a mutual will-ingness to let an arched eyebrow do the heavy lifting of soliloquy.
Tonight, though, as the garage door rattled closed behind them, palsying violently the last few feet before finally slamming down onto the concrete floor, he knew there’d be more than her eyebrow to worry about. His wife hadn’t spoken a...
About the Author-
RICHARD RUSSO is the author of nine novels, most recently Chances Are..., Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody’s Fool, was adapted into a multiple-award-winning miniseries; in 2017, he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Portland, Maine.
Reviews-
March 6, 2017 The four stories in Russo’s (Everybody’s Fool) new collection are all winners, and one is a standout. His familiar blue-collar denizens of dying mill towns are not present here; these characters are professionals, middle-aged or beyond, successful in their careers but feeling weathered by life’s vicissitudes. The trajectory they travel involves coming to terms with life-changing situations and gamely going on. As always, snappy banter defines personality; Russo’s ear for dialogue is superb. In “Horseman,” a female professor’s confrontation with a student plagiarist forces her to acknowledge the coldness in her nature that has kept her from producing significant work and establishing a deep emotional relationship with her husband and son. In “Voice,” a student with acute Asperger’s syndrome is the object of an obsession that embroils a professor in a scandal. The experience leads to a clarifying breakthrough with his domineering older brother. Another strained family relationship is explored in “Intervention” when a Maine realtor gains clarity about his father’s behavior as he comes to terms with a dire medical diagnosis. The final story, “Milton and Marcus,” is the most satisfying: a novelist whose work has lost vitality has a chance to write a movie from one of his forgotten scripts, but to do so he must ignore his own ethical standards. Russo develops these stories with smooth assurance, allowing readers to discover layers of meaning in his perfectly calibrated narration. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Starred review from February 15, 2017 Four brief but potent and surprising tales of midlife crises from the ever dependable Russo (Everybody's Fool, 2016, etc.).The main characters in each of these stories are accomplished people who are thrust into what initially seem like modest predicaments. The professor in "Horseman" is dealing with a plagiarizing student; the professor in "Voice" is squabbling with his brother on a vacation in Italy; the real estate agent in "Intervention" is having a hard time moving a hoarder's home; and the novelist in "Milton and Marcus" is wary of the producers asking him to revisit a screenplay he sketched out years before. But with a keen eye for detail, dashes of humor, and a knack for bouncing his characters' presents against their pasts, Russo makes these stories robust studies about the regrets they've picked up over the years. In "Voice," the longest and best of this batch, the professor's estrangement from his brother stokes memories of a recent scandal over his treatment of a closed-off student, which in turn influences his careful flirtation with a woman in his tour group. For the professor in "Horseman," the bad student is a prompt for her to consider whether her professional coolness has served her well either in academia or her home life. As ever, Russo is superb at finding spots of comedy in these situations. The hoarder's home has "an espresso machine the size of a snowmobile"; the frustrated screenwriter thinks, "a smart man would've left it right there, but he didn't seem to be around." This gives the four stories a peculiar sameness; the narration shares a melancholy/buoyant tone regardless of setting. But the autumnal mood fits for these tales of reckonings, and Russo rarely wastes a word, interweaving details and dialogue into master classes on storytelling. "Some writers have less fuel in the tank than others," one of his characters laments, but Russo himself is chugging along just fine.
COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from April 1, 2017 In a cohesive and astute collection of short stories, Russo eschews the middle-class working Everyman he portrays in such novels as Everybody's Fool (2016) and revisits ground familiar to fans of his academic satire, Straight Man (1998), and the poignant Bridge of Sighs (2008). In doing so, he probes the tender egos and fractured psyches of academics and writers and ponders the tenuous ties that bind brother to brother, father to son, husband to wife. The lopsided world of the modern university is exposed when a professor's confrontation with a plagiarizing student challenges her own career and marriage in Horseman, while a semiretired professor is conned into accompanying his brother on a trip to Venice, where the exotic change of scene serves only to remind them of failed relationships at home and abroad. A struggling real-estate agent faces an emotional and physical crisis in Intervention, while an erstwhile screenwriter navigates Hollywood's mercurial egos in Milton and Marcus. Getting into the minds of Russo's characters, no matter their background, is a singularly satisfying journey. Very few writers so thoroughly embrace human foibles, or present them in such an accepting and empathic manner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
January 1, 2017
Pulitzer Prize winner Russo returns with four not-so-short stories featuring protagonists who aren't blue collar, as his protagonists often are. For instance, "Voice" features a semiretired academic pressured by his brother into traveling to Venice for the Biennale. With a 75,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 1, 2017
Of these four short fiction pieces from Pulitzer Prize winner Russo, two are English Department tales, although neither is as antic as his Straight Man, arguably the best novel ever in this genre. In the relatively tepid "Horseman," a professor deals with a problematic plagiarizing student; in "Voice," an elderly professor is conned into a tour of Venice, possibly (or not) to reconcile with his egoist brother while anguishing over an awful incident with a student with Asperger's. The antic is more present in "Intervention," where a real estate agent is asked to deal with a serious medical condition, an insistent and erratic property owner, and a weird prospective customer. "Milton and Marcus" offers an inactive novelist whose screenwriting career may suddenly revive when a long-forgotten "idea" comes to light and he is invited to the Jackson Hole retreat of aging superstar William Nolan and a bunch of Hollywood operators; this one sends up the film industry in a way that does honor to the aforementioned Straight Man. The latter two stories are the best. VERDICT A bit uneven but with many high points, this collection is not as engaging as the author's world-class long fiction, but still, be aware, this is Richard Russo. [See Prepub Alert, 11/27/16.]--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Jennifer Senior, The New York Times Book Review
"Thoughtful, soulful . . . It will abruptly break your heart. That's what Richard Russo does, without pretension or fuss, time and time again."
Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe
"[Trajectory is] so rich and flavorsome that the temptation is to devour it all at once. I can't in good conscience advise otherwise."
Publishers Weekly
"Russo develops these stories with smooth assurance, allowing readers to discover layers of meaning in his perfectly calibrated narration."
Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Russo rarely wastes a word, interweaving details and dialogue into master classes on storytelling."
Robert Allen Papinchak, New York Journal of Books
"Entertaining and compellingly provocative. . . . vibrant narratives with distinctive characters."
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