| Book Review |
This
well written novel is one of many by Richard Russo. The Pulitzer Prize
winner is well known for his movie adaptations including Empire Falls
and Nobody's Fool. This story revolves around three friends, a sort of
love triangle in a small town in NY, known for its polluted river banks
now, but was then the only employer in the tannery: where owners became
wealthy with little to no oversight of their environmental destruction.
The narrator, Lou C. Lynch nicknamed Lucy, not by choice, is writing his
memoir and the reader goes back in time with him as he remembers his
life as a young child in Thomaston, NY. Fitting in, making friends,
keeping them, bullying, falling in love, loss, bigotry, betrayal,
illness. The three friends each have their private reasons to leave and
to stay. Lucy is content to stay forever and love everyone and find good
in everyone. Sarah is a would-be artist who stays out of love and
loyalty, and Bobby plans his departure by
the time he is 15. They each consider their parents' lives and wonder if
they can choose to turn into a replica of them, or alter their path in
some way. The imagery of the written word is powerful and I was quite
thoroughly taken into the town and into the central meeting place, the
Lynch grocery store as the fourth graders grew to teens: playing
football, planning for college, working menial labor jobs, learning to
drive, marrying, and enlisted to fight in Vietnam, and some teens never
to be seen again. This story provides glimpses into the bigotry and
poverty in and around the Lynch family as they struggle to stay afloat,
and carve out a life. |
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