The Bottom Line
Pros
- Intricately intertwined narrative
- Wonderfully timed transformations of people and places
- A genuinely engrossing, heart-breaking and heart-mending love triangle
- Multiple richly drawn characters and families
- Small town New England, authentically captured with ease
Cons
- It's so good--hasn't he done this before?
Description
- "Lucy" retraces his childhood through his memory, writing the beginning of the novel in his adult voice.
- He sees himself as a simple boy growing up in a small town, with parents who teach him opposite perspectives on life.
- His best friend has another perspective, growing up in a household of many brothers, a petrified mother & an abusive father.
- Their friendship strains and grows through adolescence when they encounter Sarah, the "girl next door."
- This trio of friends encounter life in unique ways, shaped by their perspectives and decisions whether or not to change.
Guide Review - Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo - Book Review
In order to observe the question with rich depth and balanced perspective, Russo focuses in on 3 main characters: Lucy, Sarah and Bobby. These lifelong friends each take compelling turns living the question and defining (and redefining) the answer through their relationships with family, friends and each other.
Russo also works in various other colorful characters, his memorable archetypes and foils lovingly brought to life (timid loving fathers vs. overbearing abusive fathers, rascally brothers vs. challenging friends, shrewd and strong women vs. naive and spoiled girls, etc.). Every individual belongs, as if Russo were observing a 50-year period of history of the town of Thomaston, capturing all the public and private social, economic and personal developments.
With his deft ability to compose a compellingly authentic narrative, Russo composes Bridge of Sighs into a seemingly historical 3-piece autobiography with the town as a whole reflecting an even greater story. As Lucy's mother (the shrewd and strong type) says, "understand Thomaston and you understand America."
