The cinema and the new opportunities for writers up to that time not so recognized. Commented the case of Anthony Burgess and its clockwork orange, the one of a Richard Russo that until his life (or rather that of his character Donald Sullivan) crossed with Paul Newman, he did not pass for being a writer in mediocrity.
Hence the Pulitzer thanks to the time that, as the writer said Rosa Regas By collecting the Planet, it is earned with the economic accolade that the awards themselves or the parallel success give.
In other words, there was plenty of quality in the teacher who was doing his first steps as a writer (I suppose that what so many people who find writing a hobby, an escape valve or simply a creative worm will do).
In the strictly narrative, Russo stands out as a character writer. And precisely knowing himself to be a good builder of personalities, Russo places his protagonists in out of place settings, where the personality still shines more for the exotic or the strange, for the unpredictable component always with that verisimilitude of the writer endowed with that analytical virtue of being. human and their behavior.
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Richard Russo
Not a fool's hair
Sully is sixty years old and not a fool even though, as one of his friends claims, he is the champion of useless gestures. He lives in North Bath, a small provincial town that, like him, has seen better times.
The son of a brutal drunk who destroyed his mother and brother, Sully also has his pluses and minuses with alcohol, and has found a way not to repeat the story of his father by shunning commitments, putting distances with those he could have. to love.
She got divorced shortly after getting married, she had a son whom she did not mistreat but who she never took care of, and has survived day by day through hard manual labor - despite her intelligence - and rejecting any possibility of enriching herself. It has not been an unhappy life, yet.
Sully is an attractive and vital man despite his escapism, and he has always had friends and a lover who did not demand too much of him. But now he has reached the age when life takes its toll, and he is out of work and on the verge of bankruptcy, with one knee disabled by accident and arthritis, a revered but hopelessly stupid assistant and a broken van.
And her son, also out of work and in the midst of a marital catastrophe, has returned to North Bath. But perhaps that reunion will force Sully to finally take control of his life, and allow him to undo some knots of his past.
Finishing fool
Second parts never was good. Unless you've got enough Richard Russo grace to go through the lining of unspoken rules about any creation.
And so comes this second part of the reunion with Sully. A new installment as successful as the first because it is not the second part of a great mystery or adventure plot. The first part was a matter of Sully and his circumstances and in this second part the reunion with him is as sincere and passionate as the previous one.
The irresistible Sully, into whose hands an unexpected fortune has fallen in the years since, is faced with a diagnosis from the Veterans Association doctor, according to which he has between one and two years to live, and it costs him a lot to hide the news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman with whom he has been in a relationship for years; Rub Squeers, the supergafe, so concerned to ensure that Sully remains his best friend; Sully's son and grandson, from whose lives he once missed (and now regrets).
We also enjoy the company of Doug Raymer, the local police chief, obsessed above all with finding out the identity of the man with whom his wife was about to run away if he does not suffer, just before, a very strange fatal accident.
There is the Mayor of Bath, Gus Moynihan, a former Cathedral, whose wife raises even more pressing problems ... but there is also Carl Roebuck, who has spent his life doing the wrong things to get promoted, but this time the method may no longer work . And finally we have Charice Bond, the light at the end of the tunnel in which he is locked when he enters his office, and her brother, Jerome, who may be the train that enters the tunnel at full speed and in opposite direction.
In Smash Tonto abounds with humor, feelings, the harshness of the times, and characters that it is inevitable to love, perhaps because their different defects make them thunderously human. It's a classic Russo - an achievement that will crown one of the greatest storytellers of our time.
The magical summer on Cape Cod
The characters in this novel are back, back to that land of parents and childhood, of the past made up of memories and shreds of the soul, where everything is learned and where you forget to be a child and therefore to be happy ...
But it is not a dramatic novel. In the same way that life is not a dramatic play when it takes you through its most exciting scenes. It is about that melancholy that sometimes makes you laugh or cry, transporting you to the place where you are as fragile as childhood or youth that you will no longer inhabit.
Thirty years ago, during their honeymoon on Cape Cod, the place of their childhood vacation, Jack and Joy Griffin drew up a plan for the future that, in large part, has been fulfilled.
Now the two are back on Cape Cod to celebrate the marriage of their daughter's best friend Laura. Jack drives around in the car with his father's ashes in the trunk while his mother frequently calls his cell phone.
But when a year later the wedding of his daughter Laura is celebrated, his mother's urn travels along with his father's in the trunk (although neither does his voice give him rest), and neither he nor Joy are the same. . How did they get to that point on the road?
