Bridge of Sighs

Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo.

Amazingly rich, detailed, immersive novel set in a small town in upstate NY.

Told primarily from the alternating pov of two boys from the poor side of town, one who grows up and leaves town to become an internationally famous artist, the other who eventually reaches staid upper-middle class respectability and never leaves town.  The latter, Lucy (corruption of Louis), is the main protagonist.  The world is drawn through his eyes, in layer upon layer of detail, and how each piece of detail is used again and again to sharp, telling effect, is masterful.

You enter the world of the novel, the pains of childhood and the universe of a small town, and never want to leave it.  Many moving passages as Lucy ruminates about love, about growing old, about the loss of his father, and his own sense of failure as a husband and father (even though no one would view him as such).

Towards the end though the pace speeds up unreasonably, out of keeping with the rest of the book.  Also many of the huge dramatic events that the book has been building towards (one boy killing his father, the death of the mother of the girl Sarah that both boys love) are told so obliquely and in so much haste that you feel cheated.  Also two thirds of the way through the book a third pov is introduced (Sarah) which seems jarring and gimmicky.  And Sarah rescues and adopts a poor damaged black girl and brings her back to the town in NY -- that feels unrealistic, wishful thinking to obliterate white liberal guilt.  Finally, the relationship between the artist and his oh-so-suave and oh-so-worldly dealer, while entertaining, seems ultimately a stereotype and almost a caricature, as if the author was out of his element.

The book is best in drawing the tiny human dramas and the underlying senses of longing, guilt and loss that link them, and especially from a backward-looking pov, back to childhood.  In that it is simply brilliant.

3.5*
(May 2010)