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Title: The Whore's Child : Stories by Richard Russo ISBN: 0-375-72601-2 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 08 July, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: This book reaffirmed my aesthetic
Comment: I teach at a large university and had recently spent a lot of time among academics, learning and thinking about literary and critical theory. I love that stuff for the avenues of understanding it can make available to us and for the depth it can add to our favorite books. But spend enough time in Theory-Land and among the examples its inhabitants trot out, and you start to believe that there's no place anymore for a good story, well told. Well, Theory-Land is a nice place to visit, but I've no interest in living there, and thankfully The Whore's Child brought me back.
These are, simply, great stories. And I use the word "simply" here paradoxically, because there is absolutely nothing simple about creating characters on a page that come alive with all the complexity and mystery of real people whose lives we can enter at their most revealing points. This is not to say that Russo does not experiment with form, because he does--the title story is essentially a story within a story, showing us large chunks of a student writer's manuscript; the last story is told through numerous facets of a young boy's consciousness in one of the best evocations of youthful understanding and misunderstanding I've ever read--but unlike so much "cutting edge" writing these days, Russo's experiments in form are always secondary to the story itself. One never gets the feeling that he's impressed at his own cleverness, winking over his shoulders at the other literary theorists also "in the know".
Read Empire Falls for the evocation of a small town and the way that town's character intertwines with the characters of its citizens; read Straight Man for the send-up of Academia and the often caustic humor of the first-person voice, both obscuring and revealing a tender and surprisingly idealistic core. But for the range of genius possible in unself-conscious narrative, for the depth of feeling that good writing can provoke, for the precise niche of character that is the hallmark of literary fiction, I can think of no book I've read recently that matches The Whore's Child.
Rating: 2
Summary: Don't Quit Your Day Job
Comment: Richard Russo can be a great writer, as "Empire Falls" proved. His best work comes in dealing with the plight of trapped citizens of small, fading industrial towns as in "Empire Falls", "Nobody's Fool", and "The Risk Pool". "The Whore's Child" then, does little to showcase his true talent. Most of the stories follow middle-aged professors experiencing mid-life regrets, a la Russo's novel "Straight Man". One story, "The Farther You Go" is later used (or copied from depending on the date of publication) almost exactly in "Straight Man", right down to the narrator's first name.
For anyone who really enjoyed "Straight Man", this collection of stories is great. Those who have little interest in aged professors with no REAL problems whining are better advised to stay away from this book. I definitely fall into the latter category.
In terms of the stories, I thought the title piece would have made a better novella or novel than a short story. The problem is that the tale of the nun is told second-hand when allowing the reader to actually read her story would better allow us to experience the story and to be moved by it as her classmates and professor were. The constraints of the short story do not allow me to get involved with Sister Ursula, so that I never really care about her.
"The Farther You Go", "Buoyancy", and "Poison" all follow along the similar line of an older married guy in a stale marriage on an island in Maine. "Monhegan Light" differs slightly in that the middle-aged guy is widowed and a cinematographer instead of a professor. None have the humor and power of Russo's better novels. "Joyride" is the story of a mother and son's doomed flight across the country that is more true to form. "The Mysteries of Linwood Hart" is the story that best captures the spirit of "Empire Falls"--it's a serious of episodes of 10-year-old Linwood Hart as he begins to truly understand the world. It is by far the best of the collection in my humble opinion.
Most of Russo's writing is good as usual, but one sentence from "Joyride" is one of the worst I have ever seen in print. It reads: "My throat constricted with the knowledge of who I was and what." Try reading that aloud; the "and what" makes no sense at the end of a sentence. "What" at the end almost implies a question, not a statement. At the very least, to end with "what" sounds incomplete, like there should be more there. The better sentence would have been "who and what I was". I can't believe an editor didn't correct that sentence; it's positively awful.
Anyway, except for "Linwood Hart" and "Joyride" (which has its moments), this collection of short stories holds little interest for those not experiencing a mid-life crisis. This attempt to cash in on the success of "Empire Falls" has convinced me that Russo needs to stick with his day job.
Rating: 4
Summary: Short stories by Russo
Comment: Russo's reputation hangs primarily on his ability to present the conflicting emotions of relationships with comic brio as well as pathos. It's the comedy/tragedy parallel, and he's a master at that dichotomy.
The Whore's Child is a collection of seven 'short' stories, and the title story is the most powerful, IMO. It concerns a nun, Sister Ursula, who takes a writing class, and her submission to the class concerning her lifelong search for her absent father...
Richard Russo is a master of barbed dialogue, and his wry wit and humor when writing about The Human Condition come thru clearly in every story in this collection.
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Title: Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo ISBN: 0679753338 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Risk Pool by RICHARD RUSSO ISBN: 0679753834 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Straight Man : A Novel by RICHARD RUSSO ISBN: 0375701907 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Mohawk by Richard Russo ISBN: 0679753826 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Empire Falls by Richard Russo ISBN: 0375726403 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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