Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo
Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo
23 Rating(s)
List: $32.50 | Sale: $22.75
Club: $16.25

Bridge of Sighs

Author: Richard Russo

Narrator: Arthur Morey

Unabridged: 26 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/25/2007


Synopsis

Six years after the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize—winning Empire Falls, Richard Russo returns with a novel that expands even further his widely heralded achievement.
Louis Charles (“Lucy”) Lynch has spent all his sixty years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for forty of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he’s had plenty of reasons not to be–chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an “empire” of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation.
Lucy and Sarah are also preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy, where his oldest friend, a renowned painter, has exiled himself far from anything they’d known in childhood. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the “history” he’s writing of his hometown and family. And with his story interspersed with that of Noonan, the native son who’d fled so long ago, the destinies building up around both of them (and Sarah, too) are relentless, constantly surprising, and utterly revealing.


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Juliana on 2009-02-19 20:28:38

Bridge of Sighs is a wonderful book. Russo really captured life in upstate NY. The small towns who persevere despite the decline in industry. The people who leave and the people who stay and make good lives, despite the closed and crumbling factories. A great story with real people

Goodreads review by Will on November 22, 2023

The Bridge of Sighs is that Venice pont which prisoners traverse on their way to jail, usually for good. The sighs are the prisoners bemoaning their dark fate. Are we all so condemned? Set in the upper reaches of New York, the small city of Thomaston is familiar territory for readers of Empire Falls......more

Goodreads review by Jim on July 25, 2018

The book is structured a lot like Empire Falls. Its major theme is movers vs. stayers which I talked about in my review of Empire Falls so I copied that at the bottom of this review. The main character is the “stayer” who is happy as a clam running a convenience store across the street from where he......more

Goodreads review by Sarahfina on August 07, 2012

First the bad news: Russo, as one of the Great Male Narcissists (a term coined by D.F. Wallace who did not include Russo in his assessment)has probably been accused of both racism and misogyny and these allegations do have some merit. I have read all of Richard Russo's books and I have greatly enjoye......more

Goodreads review by Katie on November 12, 2020

A rambling messy novel of almost 800 pages crying out for a rigorous editor which has probably scuppered my chances of meeting my reading challenge this year. I could have read three 250 page novels in the time it took me to finish this leviathan monster. There were times when I was impressed by Rus......more

Goodreads review by Steve on June 27, 2008

With over 500 pages, and multidimensional profiles covering school days through to later years, a great writer like Russo can give you plenty to chew on. What I appreciated most was the rich contrast in character attitudes. Is it better to be an optimist offering the benefit of the doubt even if nai......more


Quotes

"Russo's attention to the currents of friendship and family life, the conflicts, anxieties and irritations that mingle with affection and loyalty, make Bridge of Sighs a continual flow of little revelations . . . a story of constantly evolving complexity and depth . . . It's Russo's most intricate, multifaceted novel . . . enormous and enormously moving." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book World

"A great American story . . . Beautiful, funny, profound and, in the end, quietly devastating. It's a book built to endure." --Kyle Smith, People (4 stars)

"Russo makes sexual ambiguity feel homey and familiar, and he does it here with consequences more emotionally weighty than ever before. His novels have that pleasurable roominess of books rich in story and quick in prose style, but in Bridge of Sighs, he crosses from bittersweet comedy to the realm of tragedy." --Vince Passaro, O Magazine

"His most ambitious and best work." --Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

"Engrossing . . . Russo writes about [his] characters--their fistfights, bar nights, secret kisses, self-delusions--with such warmth that, whether it turns out to be a hellhole or heaven on earth, you're grateful to be back on his turf." --Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly

"A novel of great warmth, charm and intimacy . . . richly evocative and beautifully wrought." --Janet Maslin, New York Times

"[A] magnificent, bighearted new novel [and] an astounding achievement . . . From its lovely beginning to its exquisite, perfect end, Russo has written a masterpiece." --Mameve Medwed, Boston Sunday Globe

"A winning story of the strange ways that parents and children, lovers and friends connect and thrive." --Henry L. Carrigan, Jr., Library Journal

"Nobody now writing rivals Russo at untangling the knots of family connection, love and sexuality, ambition and compromise, fidelity and betrayal that link and afflict a formidable gallery of vividly observed, generously portrayed characters . . . A wise, uplifting book: a big-hearted, often comic, yet sturdily realistic testament to the resiliency of ordinary people who surprise us, and themselves, by coping, rebuilding and moving on. Rich, confounding and absorbing--utterly irresistable." --Kirkus, starred review

"Here is the novel Russo was born to write . . . Coursing with humor and humanity . . . it is a seamless interweaving of childhood memories, tragic incidents, and unforgettable dialogue." --Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

"From the first page, when narrator Lou C. "Lucy" Lynch begins to speak, readers will be drawn so completely into Russo's world that putting the book down each time feels like a shock." --Kirkus

"[A] splendid chronicle . . . Russo has a deep and real understanding of stifled ambitions and the secrets people keep, sometimes forever. Bridge of Sighs, on every page, is largehearted, vividly populated and filled with life from America's recent, still vanishing past." --Jeffrey Frank, Publishers Weekly, signature review