First the bad news: Russo, as one of the Great Male Narcissists (a term coined by D.F. Wallace who did not include Russo in his assessment)has probably been accused of both racism and misogyny and these allegations do have some merit.I have read all of Richard Russo's books and I have greatly enjoyed them all. But I am troubled by the fact that often, if a female character isn't chasing you with a rolling pin, she's got your dick in her mouth. Crazed harridans and insatiable sluts make up the ma [...]

The Bridge of Sighs is that Venice pont which prisoners traverse on their way to jail, usually for good. The sighs are the prisoners bemoaning their dark fate. Are we all so condemned? Set in the upper reaches of New York, the small city of Thomaston is familiar territory for readers of Empire Falls. This is more than a family tale. It is the story of a town as epitomized by a group of friends and relations over three generations. The big theme here is predestination, whether people are fated to [...]

Onvan : Bridge of Sighs - Nevisande : Richard Russo - ISBN : 375414959 - ISBN13 : 9780375414954 - Dar 528 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2007

In Bridge of Sighs, Russo takes you into a small upstate American town, Thomaston, and inside the lives of the Lynch family. This story is over decades and is a story with many stories. He moves the text easily between the present and the past and the different characters. The key characters are the Lynch family; Lou (Big Lou) and Tessa, son Lou C (Lucy), his wife Sarah and Bobby Marconi latterly known as Robert Noonan. Lucy, now 60, is writing his memoir and it is through this medium we learn o [...]

With over 500 pages, and multidimensional profiles covering school days through to later years, a great writer like Russo can give you plenty to chew on. What I appreciated most was the rich contrast in character attitudes. Is it better to be an optimist offering the benefit of the doubt even if naively, or a pessimist giving the detriment of the doubt even if unfairly?Two of the main characters were artists. This gave Russo the chance to use their works to help interpret the story. It also brou [...]

Sixty-year old Lucy Lynch (Louis Charles Lynch) lived in Thomaston, New York, a small town, for forty years, and experienced an even smaller place early in his life when fellow schoolmates closed him up in a trunk and left him there. Instead of being afraid, he made peace with it, discovered the comfort in claustrophobia, thereby scaring the living daylights out of these young schoolmates. However, it would lead to inexplicable 'spells' for the rest of his life.This story starts off with Lucy wr [...]

When I finished reading Richard Russo's wonderful novel Empire Falls (for which he won the Pulitzer), I wondered - how will this novelist do this again? Turns out, he just keeps getting better. One thing I've always admired about Russo is his ability to write about small towns in a way that honors the provincial nature of small town life while exploring all of its intricacies and nuances, its complexity and heartache - the way a person can live a wide life in the smallest of ponds. Perhaps this [...]

Flashback to 1999: setting off on a 30-hour train ride between Halifax and London, ON, I pick up Russo's new novel Straight Man, on the recommendation of a bookseller friend. Enthralled all the way through the Maritimes and Quebec--laughing aloud in that half-empty compartment.Once in London, I pick up The Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool, two of Russo's earlier books. And love them, esp. Nobody's Fool, which must surely be Russo's best work. A few years later, in Ithaca, NY, I eagerly purchase his n [...]

I am glad i put this one on my reading list. It is beautifully written and has a lot to say about our daily lives and our relationships between parents and children. It covers three generations of a story about two boys growing up in the 1950-60s. Though a slow but dense plot, it has a lot of memorable characters with imperfect hearts living in an imperfect world.

There is a stone bridge in Venice, Italy they call the Bridge of Sighs. it connects the Doge's Palace in St. Mark's Square, where there are interrogation rooms, to an adjacent prison. Crossing this bridge, the convicts - at least the ones without money or influence - came to understand that all hope was lost. According to legend, their despairing sighs could be heard echoing in the neighboring canals.Strangely enough, I never felt that "all hope was lost" while reading this book. Quite the contr [...]

This book was not what I was expecting at all. I confess that I picked it up in the library because of the name, because I am going to Venice in a few months' time. It is not set in Venice, but rather it is set in the small town of Thomaston, New York.This little town has residents which love it, despite the fact the river runs red and causes cancer. One such resident, Lou C. Lynch (Lucy), is the main character of this book, a man who idolises the town and his father, choosing to see the most po [...]

The Bridge of Sighs is one long-ass bridge. I suppose once you win a Pulitzer Prize, you don't have to submit to pesky things like editing. In this case, though, it would have been beneficial. The book was too long, and weirdly repetitive. I still dig Russo's writing, for the most part, and the way he can describe all the unspoken things that go on within people's relationships. That's amazing. But I was done with the book about 200 pages before he was. I finished, but only because I had some fo [...]

This is the story of Lou C. Lynch (aka Lucy, unfortunately) who grew up in upstate New York before Civil Rights and the women's movement. The setting and the characters will remind you of Russo's previous work Empire Falls, again borrowing from his own biography. As Lou and his wife Sarah prepare for a trip to Italy, he is remembering the childhood friend whom they hope to visit also recalling his very average, very middle class childhood, going from life in the rough and gritty West End part of [...]

I was a little apprehensive about this book after reading the press it received. I knew I would enjoy it, but I seeing that involved a middle-aged man reflecting on his life in a dying New England town, I feared a retread of Empire Falls.I couldn't have been more wrong. Many of the elements you would expect from Russo are there, the quiet politics of small towns, the relationship between parents and children and even the tainted river are all present. But Russo expands on these and builds them i [...]

This might be my longest review ever. Here we go, in bullet points1. I like Russo's work a lot, esp. Straight Man, Nobody's Fool, and Risk Pool. Nobody writes about rundown small towns better than Russo. In the three books already mentioned Russo doesn't overshoot his purpose; he's funny and psychologically incisive without becoming ponderous, although he can be rightfully accused of painting a rosier picture than his settings warrant. Bridge of Sighs, also set in a small town, aims higher and s [...]

This is the type of book that, had I had the luxury of not having to do a damn thing other than read, I would have read this in a day or two. It's so easy to find something engrossing about his characters, both good and bad. As it was, I read this book in between trips since it's too big to fit in my carry-on luggage, so I've managed to drag it out for some time. Now that I'm finished, I'm only sorry about that. I feel like I've just walked away from an old friend knowing that I'll never see the [...]

Reading this book is like slipping on your favorite pair of jeans- the ones you never wash to keep them perfect softly and loose, donning a beloved sweatshirt and thinking "I wish I lived the sort of life that I could wear these clothes every day" Meaning that (if you like Russo, of course) these characters, this setting, the storyline are so comforting and familiar- it's like coming home.Which isn't to say that there aren't surprises, that it isn't fresh, nuanced and captivating. It's a been a [...]

Oh my STARS!!!!!!!! I am finally done -- thank GOD. This is the longest book in the history of mankind. It was good, but not good enough to read every single word. No one REALLY cares about EVERY SINGLE thought and EVERY SINGLE memory of EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER. OH MY GOD. I honestly skimmed the last 30 pages; I couldn't take it anymore. I AM SO GLAD IT IS OVER.

BRIDGE OF IMPRISONMENTIs this what Richard Russo is trying to tell us in picking out the title of this book? Are you also someone who tries to analyze the title of each book you read as I do? Built in the 16th century in Venice, The Bridge of Sighs is the last thing a prisoner walks over before reaching his cell. The idea behind the name is that the last view a convict sees before imprisonment is a beautiful Venetian canal which must cause him to sigh at its beauty, never to be seen again until [...]

I really love Richard Russo and really enjoyed this book but felt it went on a little too long at the end -- like a good friend who you love to spend time with but who stays maybe a day longer than he should because as much as you love him you've got work to do. And yet, you can hardly be too upset because this friend says things like:"[T]here is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one [...]

This is Russo's best book.He does a couple things in this book that are impressive on both a technical and human level.That Russo can lovingly create deep and human characters has been established in all of his novels. What's truly amazing about Bridge of Sighs is the amount of depth he gives to nearly every character in the book. At the beginning of the novel we see the story from the perspective of only a couple characters. During this time, many of the characters seem predictable and shallow, [...]

This was my first Russo novel and won't be the last.Sometimes the dynamic of a family in a small town makes for the some of the most interesting stories. In the beginning, it is teased that the main action of the story may move to Venice (as the title implies), but that never really happens. This story is about a small town in New York, and the coming of age (and old age) of Louis C. ("Lucy") Lynch. It's also about his wife, his best friend, his parents, small town prejudices, and how love is co [...]

I am a huge fan of Richard Russo, so I wanted to love this one. Although, as usual, Russo paints a vivid picture of small town life, somehow the story never grabbed me. Centered on Lou "Lucy" Lynch, a typical Russo lovable loser, we hear the story of his life in a class-conscious upstate New York town. We also get snippets of the life of his best friend, a painter in Venice who escaped the small town. But the story, while solidly told, is never particularly moving. Nothing much happens, and ther [...]

Once again, Russo hits one out of the park! Just a marvelous story surrounding rich characters. BRIDGE OF SIGHS is a wonderful read.

what is it about these apparently ordinary people that would make anyone persist in believing them to be extraordinary? and they are. that's really the meat and bones of the story. i urge you to read it if you have the time, interest, and patience. some favorite passages/quotes:"The middle, she said, was the real America, the America that mattered, the America that was worth fighting wars to defend. There was just the one problem with being in the fluid middle. You could move up, as we had done, [...]

I loved it! First book by Mr Russo and it was in a word wonderful. What a way with characters this author has! I loved each and every one of them. It was so very different from the previous character driven novel (Truly, Madly, Guilty) I read which bored me to tears. Goal for 2017 read more of his novels.

(My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter].)As regular readers know, artistic criticism is something fairly new to me (or at least regular artistic criticism is), with the entire thing being as much of a learning process for me as it often is for you; and of all the new things I am learning about the subject these days, one of the most surprising is of just how strong [...]

Hmm. Well, Empire Falls this was not - it lacked the freshness and colorful characters and small town charm, though Russo tried valiantly to capture that in this book - it just felt flat to me somehow, like he knew that he was supposed to be incorporating that but it just wasn't working.The book was readable and at times engrossing, I can't say I wouldn't recommend it, but I had some issues with it. For one thing, Russo would have some insightful turns of phrase and then make sure to explain wha [...]

As usual, Russo sticks to the proverbial ribs. That is, for me anyway, his stories stay with me. I find myself thinking about the characters long after I've finished the book in question & 'Bridge' is no exception. Russo's greatest strength is an ability to create detailed, unique and real characters and there are many here. Spanning decades, various stories unfold, featuring a complex crossover of characters and episodes. It's a treat indeed to glimpse one incident from the perspectives of [...]

brilliantabsolutely brilliant.o is very nearly the most important american novelist currently workingis book is all about the vertiginouse deep disorientation and confusion that results from exposure to two very different points of viewis concept is explored in so many compelling ways through the juxtaposition of black and white, hope to despair, love to hatee idea is made that much more complex by the notion of equivocatione act of attempting to find and establish an equilibrium between two ver [...]