|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
- Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Upper Main Street in the village of North Bath, just above the town's two-block-long business district, was quietly rural along old Route 27A, a serpentine two-lane blacktop that snaked its way through the Adirondacks of northern New York, with their tiny, down-at-the-heels resort town, all the way to Montreal and prosperity. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good start to my Russo reading,
By R.J. (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Nobody's Fool (Paperback)
Nobody's Fool was the first Richard Russo book I ever read, and it made me want to read more. It's about a 50-something laborer named Sully, who seems to court disaster at every turn but somehow perserveres. Like other Russo novels, not a heck of a lot seems to happen, yet the enjoyment is in the character development, and the unfashionable setting, usually a blue collar small town in upstate New York. From his somewhat shady employer, to his elderly landlady, his unkempt and dizzy sidekick, and the old flame who is still in the picture, the characters make the book. Nobody's Fool is a relaxing and amusing page turner that draws the reader in. Maybe one day I'll watch the movie, as I wasn't even aware there was one when I read this.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautifully written book,
By
This review is from: Nobody's Fool (Paperback)
Donald Sullivan--"Sully"--has rarely met a promising opportunity he didn't walk away from. Arguably the most stubbornly wrongheaded man in the economically depressed village of North Bath, New York, Sully scrapes a living as a jack of all trades, often fed construction work by the town's most fortunate scion, Carl Roebuck. Roebuck, a man with the sexual appetite of a satyr, enjoys an amusing love-hate relationship with Sully, the product of a lifetime of acquaintance in a small town. Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool abounds in these rich relationships, fully-formed characters sharing complex, realistic histories with one another. Chief among those characters is Sully's landlady and one-time 8th-grade teacher, 80-year-old Beryl Peoples, who has been Sully's staunch ally for more than forty years.Nobody's Fool is a chronicle of one particularly trying period in Sully's life, during which he is plagued by a grotesquely swollen knee and by unusually vivid reminiscences of his abusive father, now dead. ("Sully hated to think of his father at rest, and had there been a way, and if Sully'd had the money, he'd have left instructions to have Big Jim dug up every decade or so, just to make sure he didn't get comfortable.") The book is beautifully written, and Russo's evocation of North Bath is so successful that the town and its strange-looking denizens will come to reside in your imagination. A good, long, slow read you'll be sorry to part with.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the finest American novels,
By Kirk McElhearn "Freelance writer and translator" (A town in the French Alps) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Nobody's Fool (Paperback)
There's something about this book... It grows on you. I've read it once and listened to the unabridged audiobook version, and it has a strange power.Nothing much happens in this novel, other than a few days in the life of Donald Sullivan, Sully, and the people who rotate around him in the small town of Bath, NY. But there is an Everyman quality in Sully's lackadaisical attitude toward life, his easy-going nature, his friendliness and grumpiness. He's the kind of person you'd never notice in a diner, but he's deeply ingrained in the life of this small community. Richard Russo has a talent for developing characters, through their actions and the subtle flashbacks that talk about their pasts. Sully is the quintessential Russo character, and is charming and amiable, even if he can be a pain in the ass. But like all humans, he has good and bad qualities, and this book, more than anything, shows us how human being act in good and not so good ways. This is such a good book it would go on my desert island list.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
