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Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

Nobody's Fool Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Richard Russo's slyly funny and moving new novel follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York — and in the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years.

Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its sly and uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool is storytelling at its most generous.

Review:

"Set in the economically desperate ex-resort town of North Bath, N.Y., Russo's novel displays his characteristic verbal panache and biting wit." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"Russo is a master craftsman....The blue-collar heartache at the center of [his] fiction has the sheen of Dickens but the epic levity of John Irving....Nobody's Fool is a big, rambunctious novel with endless riffs and unstoppable human hopefulness." The Boston Globe

Review:

"Remarkable....Like all the best fiction, [Nobody's Fool] is a revelation of the human heart." Washington Post Book World

Review:

"Simple as family love, yet nearly as complicated, Richard Russo's confident, assured novel sweeps the reader up in the daily life of its characters." San Francisco Chronicle

Review:

"The fun of this novel is in hearing these guys (and women) talk...they're funny, quick and inventive. The novel's tone has the same...intelligence as its characters." The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Reading this large, comfortable, good-natured novel...feels great....[It] teems with local characters...richly conceived and drawn so lovingly that you can't help but like them." Philadelphia Inquirer

Review:

"[Sully is] reminiscent, in a way, of Bellow's old men....One never tires of watching him, because he has the capacity to make everyone around him feel better, including the reader." The New Yorker

Review:

"Few novelists plow this soil with more even-handed ease and naturalness than Russo....He demonstrates a rare ability to find affection for even his most empty [characters] while questioning the choices of those he most values....His success in keeping us involved is especially impressive." Chicago Sun-Times

Review:

"Nobody's Fool is a giant hard-edged comedy, a Flannery O'Connor story taken north and gone ballistic....Russo's smart prose gives Sully's, and everyone else's, dim prospects a witty, allegorical weight." Mirabella

Review:

"As he demonstrated in Mohawk and The Risk Pool, Russo knows the small towns of upstate New York and the people who inhabit them; he writes with humor and compassion. A delight." Library Journal

Synopsis:

In his slyly funny and moving 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.

About the Author

Richard Russo lives in coastal Maine with his wife and their two daughters. He has written five novels — Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody?s Fool, Straight Man, and Empire Falls (which won the Pulitzer Prize) — and a collection of stories, The Whore's Child.

Product Details

ISBN:
9780679753339
Author:
Russo, Richard
Publisher:
Vintage Books USA
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
City and town life
Subject:
New york (state)
Subject:
New York
Subject:
City and town life -- New York (State) -- Fiction.
Subject:
Black humor
Subject:
City and town life -- Fiction.
Subject:
New York (State) Fiction.
Copyright:
Edition Description:
1st Vintage Contemporaries ed.
Series Volume:
9462
Publication Date:
April 1994
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
560
Dimensions:
806x520x93 89

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