Book: Bride of Sighs
Author: Richard Russo
Pages: 642
This is my 176th read for the year
What Amazon has to say:
Lucy Lynch is sixty years old and has spent his entire life in Thomaston, NY. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he's had plenty of reasons not to be - chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that has propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an "empire" of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation. Lucy's oldest friend, once a rival for his wife's affection, leads a life in Venice far removed from Thomaston. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the history he's writing of his hometown and family. And with his story interspersed with that of Noonan, the native son who'd fled so long ago, the destinies building up around both of them are relentless, constantly surprising, and utterly revealing.
This book was a tome. It was pretty good, but if I had to sum it up in one word it would be "rambley". It starts when Lucy and Noonan are kids, all the way until grown adults - but moving back and forward in time as the book progresses. I found myself wishing Russo would just speed it up a bit - he seemed to want to put every mundane detail of their lives into this book. I loved his "Empire Falls" book, but this one didn't flow for me like that one did. I did like Lucy and his dad, and I did like Noonan as an adult. Sarah - didn't love her character and she seemed to really unravel at the end. It wraps up nicely, but it just took so long to get there.
Stars: 3.5
No comments:
Post a Comment