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<\/a>That\u2019s Donald \u201cSully\u201d Sullivan, the quintessential literary Everyman brought into the world by Richard Russo in Nobody\u2019s Fool<\/em> and Somebody\u2019s Fool<\/em>. Gruff, drunk a lot, blue collar, bad father, good grandfather, honest, loyal, sometimes smart, sometimes dumb, he was a legend in his time, and in his hometown of North Bath. He\u2019s dead 10 years at the start of the book. But \u2014 this is Sully\u2019s book.<\/p>\nNorth Bath is dead, too, recently absorbed by its upscale neighbor Schuyler. The decline affects everyone in the cast of characters constant in this series. Chief Raymer isn\u2019t chief anymore, since there\u2019s no police department, and he doesn\u2019t even know if he still has a girlfriend. Birdie, the owner of the White Horse Tavern, wonders if she\u2019s lost the chance to sell, let alone make any money. Ruth, Sully\u2019s paramour, watches from a booth as her daughter Janie tries to keep Hattie\u2019s Lunch open, taking extra waitress shifts to keep afloat. Sully\u2019s pal and shadow Rub didn\u2019t come out of his house for months after Sully\u2019s death, and he still waits for Sully\u2019s voice to tell him what to do. They are all stuck.<\/p>\n
No one is immobilized under the shadow of Sully, however, more than his son Peter. He left a second-rate career teaching in New York to come home to help Sully, and ended up chairman of the English Department of the local second-rate college. He plans to escape as soon as he finishes remodeling and selling the house Sully left him (he\u2019s as good with a tool holster as Sully was), but the job seems to be stretching out. And then there\u2019s that list of people Sully gave him that he\u2019s supposed to keep his eye on\u2026.<\/p>\n
Russo throws a number of things into the novel\u2019s 2010 three-day scenario that shake up the inertia \u2014 Peter\u2019s estranged son, a yellow Cadillac, a black man who thinks he\u2019s James Bond, a rogue cop and a decomposing hanged man. The combination sets off the credo that is part of Sully\u2019s legacy \u2014 do something, and if it doesn\u2019t work, do something else. Everything and everyone goes into motion, and Russo once again gives us a great ride through North Bath. The outcome would make Sully smile.<\/p>\n
Russo writes most of this in third person when not in dialogue; he does both with his acclaimed skill. He writes moving passages without violating the voices of his working-class company of characters:\u00a0\u201cWhat Thomas\u2019s sudden appearance yesterday had brought home to him so forcefully was that the figure in the carpet that was his life was becoming discernible, and it wasn\u2019t one Peter had intended to weave.\u201d Ruth realizes, \u201cThe world was a place where signals that might have saved you never made it through the noise,\u201d and she cries. Russo also fills in the backstory of the first two novels without slowing narrative and paints a finely-detailed picture of small-town life. After 30 years, he ends Sully\u2019s story with a grand finale.<\/p>\n
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If you missed this book when it was published in 2016, or over the years since, you may join Bob Moyer as he savors Richard Russo\u2019s last, skillful look at his memorable literary creation, Donald \u201cSully\u201d Sullivan of North Bath. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer EVERYBOODY\u2019S FOOL. By Richard Russo. Alfred A. Knopf. 451 pages.$29. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[287,136,1365,383,1064,1364],"class_list":["post-3129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-literary-fiction","tag-american-fiction","tag-contemporary-fiction","tag-everybodys-fool","tag-literary-fiction","tag-richard-russo","tag-sully"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3129"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3132,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129\/revisions\/3132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}