Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Book Review: Richard Russo "Elsewhere"


Soooo... maybe I will read this year.  Or maybe not.  Seems like at best an even money bet if you could get someone to take it.  I have some optimism if I can find books like Richard Russo’s new memoir by one of my favorites Richard Russo.  I love this guy.  I have read everyone of his books and some of them twice.  He has a nice conversational style and his stories never go anywhere which is just...perfect.  Most of his books are set around dying New England towns and largely rely on family to provide the drama and it tends to show that family drama is the most compellingdrama and it is one of the constants in your life.  I also take from his books that heartbreak and regret are a constant of life... if your lucky.

His newest book is a memoir and it largely follows his life but if tracks his life through what is apparently the most important character in it, his mother.  Which seems like it would make for a boring sad story and though there is a somewhat momotonous repetition to the story it is not boring but it is pretty relentlessly sad.  He was raised by a single working mother who took pride in her “independance” from her alcoholic, gambling WWII vet of a husband who was never around and could never be counted on.  She read to Russo (an only child) and made sure he did his home work no matter how tired she was.  They barely made it by and did so as their home town died around them, with the help of her parents who lived downstairs.

it seemed heartening and problematic until he left for college in Arizona and... she came along.  From that point till the end the tables solidly turn.  Somewhere in college he comes to grips with what his father and grandparents had known but could never voice and that is that his mother is mentally ill.  The rest of the book is a catalogue of his (and his wife and daughter) coping with her mental illness as she traveled with them along as his career processed.  It is painful but riveting as you read occasionally and briefly of his long suffering wife and wonder why she tolerated her husbands devotion to this woman with so many problems who despite her proud independance was always a burden.  

You kind of feel that Russo himself he had to write this book.  The cathartic feeling of it resembles a huge toilet bowl full of the dump of his psyche as he recounts the damage caused by his mother and his love of her.  He realizes as a 50 year old that he is a lot like her and that is probably the most painful revelation as he realizes that his wife and family suffer his less acute mental illness just as he has suffered his mothers and just as she was constantly hobbling herself with poor decisions, he was doing it as well, just with different decisions.  

Still, as in his novels there is a beauty here.  The writing style and the semse of pace and timing are always there.  The story reveals a lot about his history and his heart which are fascinating by a fan but interesting for anyone who is a reader because he writes so true.  Over and over again in this book, as in all his books there is an overwhelming love/hate relationship with family and all the baggage that ensues but despite all the pain and disasters there is an appreciation for the loyalties that can only exist in the context of family and it makes for a very good read.  It is relatively short and you can rip through it in a few hours if you are of a mind.  I was blessed with a nice mother who has always kept her problems to herself even now as she makes arrangements for she and my father to move into a retirement facility (so as not to be a burden).  But she likes to read, and she will like this book.  So will you.

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