Product Description
Louis Charles Lynch (also known as Lucy) is sixty years old and has lived in Thomaston, New York, his entire life. He and Sarah, his wife of forty years, are about to embark on a vacation to Italy. Lucy's oldest friend, once a rival for his wife's affection, leads a life in Venice far removed from Thomaston. Perhaps for this reason Lucy is writing the story of his town, his family, and his own life that makes up this rich and mesmerizing novel, interspersed with that of the native son who left so long ago and has never looked back.

Bridge of Sighs, from the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls, is a moving novel about small-town America that expands Russo's widely heralded achievement in ways both familiar and astonishing.

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Richard Russo's first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, Bridge of Sighs is a typically stunning portrait of three small town families struggling--like the town itself--to strike a balance between obsessively embracing their own history or shunning it entirely, with devastating consequences along both paths. Bridge of Sighs is pure Russo: funny, heartbreaking, and ringing completely true. --Jon Foro

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 130 reviews)

Haunting

As a Richard Russo fan (I've read everything he's written), I was dumbfounded by this book at times.

Unlike Empire Falls, the Bridge of Sighs takes long, rambling detours through story and emotion. I found myself at times saying, "Okay, already. Get on with it." I also found myself absolutely intrigued by Russo's descriptions of the characters' interior lives and his incisive connections between the seemingly disconnected and mundane goings on in everyone's lives.

I finished the book a week ago but I'm still haunted. An amazing book.

Russo keeps the reader on his toes by going from first-person present tense, first-person past tense, third-person present tense, and third-person past tense. And he intertwines them closely enough at times that I had to stop and think about where I was in time.

A fabulous read. Highly recommended.
November 12, 2008

I loved this book

This is the best book I have read in a long time. I think I liked it better than "Empire Falls." It is a book that leaves you examining the pattern on the carpet of your own life.
November 05, 2008

boring

very slow, I stopped several times and forced myself to come back to it. Largely unbelievable. A terrible picture of the mother/grandmother (Tessa)who can do nothing right, and central parts for these backward men (3 generations)who can do nothing wrong. Very sexist, women are to be suspected of almost everything. A dreadful saga!
November 01, 2008

With a wry smile

The main narrative is an autobiography of Louis C Lynch, who is known as Lucy and is such a nice guy that he is suspected of being gay. This is interspersed with story from the view point of his wife Sarah and his old friend Noonan, who has escaped Thomaston, their benighted small town in upstate New York, to become a big time artist. Lou's autobiography goes back for most of the time to their teenage years in Thomaston, a place blighted by oncogenic decaying industries and racist, homophobic bullies.
It is strongly plotted and an absorbing read but I was a little disappointed. Because of the setting and the literary plaudits, including a Pulitzer Prize, that put him in the category of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford and Joyce Carol Oates, I had been expecting dirty realism and minimalism, but I found Russo to be long-winded. He uses lengthy stretches of interior monolog instead of dialog and does a lot of telling instead of showing. Clichés abound. Characters speak, on more than one occasion, "with a wry smile." The black characters, and only the black characters, have their dialect rendered phonetically, with speech such as "Lease you ain't loss your mind completely"

October 29, 2008

Great selection for a book discussion group

This is another Russo novel featuring well-rounded characters is realistic situations. There is hope, despair, humor and fine observations of everyday life throughout the wonderful novel. A great read and a good choice for a book discussion group.
October 21, 2008

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