ALSO BY RICHARD RUSSO
“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.” —Boston Globe
MOHAWK
Mohawk, New York, is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Its citizens, too, have fallen on hard times. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money, and, inevitably, another set of false teeth. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over the care of her sick father. Out of derailed ambitions and old loves, secret hatreds and communal myths, Russo creates a novel that captures every nuance of America’s backyard.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-75382-6
NOBODY’S FOOL
This slyly funny and moving 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.
Fiction/0-679-75333-8
THE RISK POOL
Set again in Mohawk, New York, Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called adult. His father, Sam, cultivates bad habits, and his mother, Jenny, is slowly going crazy from resentment at a husband who refuses to either stay or go away. As Ned veers between allegiances to these grossly inadequate role models, Russo gives us a book that overflows with outsized characters and outlandish predicaments.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-75383-4
VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
New from
Richard Russo
That Old Cape Magic
It’s the end of what seems like a perfectly lovely wedding weekend on the Cape, but for Griffin, the middle-aged father of the bride, it marks the beginning of his descent into a failed marriage, a confrontation with his parents’ deaths, and the realization that the life he has does not measure up to the life he thought he wanted. With moments of great comedy alternating with others of rueful understanding, That Old Cape Magic is unlike anything Richard Russo has ever written.
Available August 2009 in hardcover from Knopf
$25.95 • 272 pages • 978-0-375-41496-1
Please visit www.aaknopf.com
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