After eight commanding works of fiction, the Pulitzer Prize
winner now turns to memoir in a hilarious, moving, and
always surprising account of his life, his parents, and the
upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escape.
Anyone familiar with Richard Russo's acclaimed novels will
recognize Gloversville once famous for producing that
eponymous product and anything else made of leather. This is
where the author grew up, the only son of an aspirant mother
and a charming, feckless father who were born into this
close-knit community. But by the time of his childhood in
the 1950s, prosperity was inexorably being replaced by
poverty and illness (often tannery-related), with everyone
barely scraping by under a very low horizon.
A world elsewhere was the dream his mother instilled in
Rick, and strived for herself, and their subsequent
adventures and tribulations in achieving that
goal—beautifully recounted here—were to prove lifelong, as
would Gloversville's fearsome grasp on them both. Fraught
with the timeless dynamic of going home again, encompassing
hopes and fears and the relentless tides of familial and
individual complications, this story is arresting, comic,
heartbreaking, and truly beautiful, an immediate classic.
© 2003-2025 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy