A New York Times 2016 Notable Book
An immediate national best seller and instant classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. Richard Russo returns to North Bathââa town where dishonesty abounds, everyone misapprehends everyone else and half the citizens are half-crazyâ (The New York Times)âand the characters who made Nobodyâs Fool a beloved choice of book clubs everywhere. Everybodyâs Fool is classic Russo, filled with humor, heart, hard times, and people you canât help but love, possibly because their various faults make them so human.
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Everybodyâs Fool picks up roughly a decade since we were last with Miss Beryl and Sully on New Year's Eve 1984. The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is staring down a VA cardiologistâs estimate that he has only a year or two left, and itâs hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years . . . the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully arenât still best friends . . . Sullyâs son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure (and now a regretful one). We also enjoy the company of Doug Raymer, the chief of police whoâs obsessing primarily over the identity of the man his wife mightâve been about to run off with, before dying in a freak accident . . . Bathâs mayor, the former academic Gus Moynihan, whose wife problems are, if anything, even more pressing . . . and then thereâs Carl Roebuck, whose lifelong run of failing upward might now come to ruin. And finally, thereâs Charice Bondâa light at the end of the tunnel that is Chief Raymerâs officeâas well as her brother, Jerome, who might well be the train barreling into the station.
A crowning achievementââlike hopping on the last empty barstool surrounded by old friendsâ (Entertainment Weekly)âfrom one of the greatest storytellers of our time.