Mohawk

The Risk Pool A wonderfully funn and perceptive novel in the traditions of Thornton Wilder and Anne Tyler, The Risk Pool is set in Mohawk, New York, where Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called adult.His father, Sam, cultivate...	Nobody's Fool In his slyly funny and moving new novel, the author of The Risk Pool follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat, upstate New York town--and in the lives of the unluckiest of its citizens. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Melanie G...	Straight Man: A Novel First Jane Smiley came out of the comedy closet with Moo, a campus satire par excellence, and now Richard Russo has gotten in on the groves-of-academe game. Straight Man is hilarious sport, with a serious side. William Henry Devereaux Jr., is almost 50 and stuck forever as cha...	Bridge of Sighs: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Richard Russo's first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, Bridge of Sighs is a typically stunning portrait of three small town families struggling--like the town itself--to strike a balance between obsessively embracing the...	Empire Falls Like most of Richard Russo's earlier novels, Empire Falls is a tale of blue-collar life, which itself increasingly resembles a kind of high-wire act performed without the benefit of any middle-class safety nets. This time, though, the author has widened his scope, producing a c...
The Whore's Child: Stories In The Whore's Child, Richard Russo's first collection of short fiction, the 2002 Pulitzer Prize-wining author of Empire Falls explores difficult emotional territory while retaining the assured wisdom and humor of his best work. Infidelity, self-reflection, and the fallibility of...	The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel (Oprah Book Club #62) Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: It's gutsy for a debut novelist to offer a modern take on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin--particularly one in which the young hero, born mute, communicates with people, dogs, and the occasional ghost through his own mix of sign and body languag...	The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Amazon Best of the Month, September 2007: It's been 11 years since Junot Díaz's critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The ti...	The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Pretty early on in The Gathering you realize that in her lingering portrait of the Hegarty clan (and this isn't hyperbole--they are a family of 12), Irish novelist Anne Enright will wrestle with all the giant literary tropes that h...	Empire Falls A frame-bursting roster of actors crowds this two-part HBO miniseries, which is nothing less than a look at America through the lens of a small New England town. Richard Russo adapted his own novel, a story of a gently depressed factory town that has always been run by the wealth...

Disappointing
I liked "Empire Falls" and I loved "Bridge of Sighs." However, "Mohawk" is a disappointment. It reads like a first draft of "Bridge of Sighs." Many of the same elements appear in both books: a quiet boy as a central character, delinquents who extort money from their peers, a legendary fight that puts one boy in the hospital, a popular teenager who leaves home and lives in a flat above a store, a community poisoned by the local tannery. I could go on. Everyone has to start somewhere. As a first novel, this book certainly showed promise. However, Russo has found his voice in far better novels. "Mohawk" is poorly constructed and the characters are not particularly well drawn. (Why on earth would the beautiful, intelligent Anne marry a doofus like Dallas Younger?) If I were Russo, I would insist that the publisher move this book to the out of print list. I sure would like to get my money back.

Don't pass this up en route to Empire Falls
Nowadays, there's so much attention placed on "Empire Falls" that this summertime reading gem gets lost. You can read the other reviews that say this book isn't as epic as that Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. That doesn't mean you should pass on this book. The first chapter of "Mohawk" drew me in; the diner setting is written with such detail that I felt as though I could've pulled up a stool and ordered a breakfast special myself.

Lost Opportunities
In the opening the setting is the Mohawk Grill. Its successor establishment is redrawn for the reader near the conclusion, providing a wonderful framing device for the novel. Wild Bill is a patron and a charitable recipient. Harry Saunders is the owner of the grill. Early business is the product of an all-night poker game on the second floor. Dallas Younger is divorced. His wife Anne and son Randall live apart from him with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mather Grouse. Anne's counsin, Diane Wood, is not divorced, but she also lives with a parent, her mother. Anne tells her father she is going to move to Connecticut. Her employer would like it, and Randall's schooling would improve. Anne's father had worked in the leather factory. He had been promoted to foreman but asked to be returned to his former position of worker. He never told anyone the reason he sought to return to his former position. He was distrusted by the others. Mather Grouse had never really fit in. He had hoped that Anne would be able to get out of Mohawk. (Anne was to hold the same hope for Randall as he grew to be a young man.) When Randall dropped out of college and faced becoming a draft dodger, he wondered what his grandfather, now deceased, would have thought of his action. Events roar along, carrying everyone with them. Russo does an excellent job.

So close ...!
This book challenged me to ask myself what comprises a "good book". On the one hand, the part of me that majored in English in college loved every delicious page of this well-crafted work. Superb character sketches, insightful themes (can true love be wrong? are our lives directed by fate or self-will? why do we remain loyal to our mistakes? why do we seek to rationalize that which is inherently irrational?), some imaginative symbolism, the author's honest, graceful voice and technical skill - especially the way Russo paces the novel so that information & insights emerge organically, in the context of the story rather than via awkward expository text - kept me on my toes throughout the story, grinning with scholarly pleasure each time a plot deftly wrapped in on itself or a particularly ingenious turn of phrase suddenly illuminated a theme or universal truth. I love, too, that Russo doesn't condescend to his readers, trusting us to make inferences and recognize themes and to spot irony without hitting us over the head with it. It has been months since I read anything so technically and literarily (is that even a word?) satisfying. On the other hand, the reader in me craved something more ... filling. Characters that change and grow rather than remaining fixed points. (I recognize that this is a major theme of the story, but that doesn't make it any more satisfying.) A plot dominant enough to unite and give purpose to the fragmented, endlessly intersecting strands of storyline. Conflicts that rise above - or at least make more noble/meaningful - the everyday conflicts of duty, loyalty, selfishness, desire & honor that shape everyone's lives, whether you happen to inhabit a tannery town in PA in the `60s or a suburb of DC in the `90s. This story simply doesn't stand up when it comes to capturing the reader's imagination ... or heart. I haven't yet read Empire Falls, but if Russo ever figures out how to blend his technical brilliance with characters & a story that capture the reader's attention and empathy, he is destined to become a formidable literary figure. I get English major goosebumps just thinking about it!

Solid, but...
A solid novel, but short of the standard he was to set later with works like 'Nobody's Fool' and 'Straight Man'. It isn't hard to see why this was first published by a small house, and only re-issued by a major company once the name Russo became a bankable selling point. Some startling insights and fine turns of phrase, but some clinkers and cliches as well. There is simply too much material, easily enough to stock three full length novels, so we get sketches where we'd like portraits, and the plot doesn't so much wander as careen wildly. Easy to see how it launched his career, though-- the core Russo's talent is on full display. Every character is treated with respect, even affection. I'd class it about equal to the over-rated 'Empire Falls', a bit behind the under appreciated 'Straight Man', and well back of 'Nobody's Fool', his quiet masterpiece. Worth your time if you are already a fan, but not best place to enter his world for the first time.