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Chances Are...
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
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Publisher's summary
“[Russo’s] first novel in ten years hits the ball out of the park.... You’ll lap up this gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” (The Boston Globe)
“A cascade of charm.... Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.” (The Washington Post)
One beautiful September day, three men in their late 60s convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the '60s. They couldn't have been more different then or even today - Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey is a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, 45 years later, three lives and that of a significant other are put on display while the distant past confounds the present in a relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are... introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the listener's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga.
Critic reviews
“[Russo’s] first novel in ten years hits the ball out of the park.... Along with his wry eye for irony and regret, [Russo] offers up a compelling mystery.... When the denouement comes, it’s a stunner. Nevertheless, all bombshells feel earned. If you’re on a hammock in the Vineyard or under a tent in Acadia, or slumped over the fire escape of your hot city apartment, chances are your chances are awfully good that you’ll lap up this gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” (Mameve Medwed, The Boston Globe)
“A cascade of charm.... Each [character is] so appealing that you hate to let him go, though you’ll quickly feel just as fond of the next one.... One of the great pleasures of Chances Are... stems from how gracefully Russo moves the story along two time frames, creating that uncanny sense of memories that feel simultaneously near and remote.... Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post)
"Chances Are... is, at heart, less a mystery than an evocation of what happens when [its characters] discover that 'the membrane separating sympathy from pity could be paper thin'.... The cloud of remorse that hangs over [the novel] can be affecting precisely because these old friends have so much difficulty articulating their emotions. Will they be able to open up to whatever the future holds?" (Alida Becker, The New York Times Book Review)
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- Brent Duncan
- 08-28-19
Incredibly Disappointing
It is difficult to come up with words to describe how bad this book really is. From an author both my wife and I have respected and admired comes this truly dreadful and trite piece of trash. Poorly written and even more poorly conceived. Cliched attempts to be relevant and wise. Adoption, sexual assault and incest - whatever the topic, Russo’s characters define themselves as jerks, assholes or just weak - morally and mentally. This is Russo’s view of men? Terrible characters who we came to dread with each chapter. Oh no, another dive into Tedusky’s pitiful life. Not Lincoln again!! Or Big Mic on Potts? Not to mention the minor jerks - the drunk ex-cop and the narcissistic or abusive father. And by the time we finally got to JC’s DREADFUL story we couldn’t have cared less. She turned out to be even worse than we could ever imagine, and we wished she had never left the island. The narrator had a difficult time distinguishing characters so it was hard to tell who the heck he was reading so the characters mushed together. There was a time, mid book, when we felt that maybe this was a bad book, badly narrated. No, this is it terrible book. It’s so hard to believe that the same mind that wrote Straight Man or Empire Falls could have written this.
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27 people found this helpful
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- LiLi
- 08-09-19
What can I say? It's Richard Russo
Mr. Russo is one of my favorite authors. Nobody else captures the humor, angst, and sweetness of the "normal" guy's existence like he does. If I described my neighbor to you, you might be a little bored. Listening to Richard Russo's deft, incisive description, you will laugh, groan, maybe tear up a little bit. This book has a mystery in it, but it's really the main characters' involvement in this mystery that makes it a signature Russo.
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19 people found this helpful
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- Lisa L. Grady
- 08-30-19
Too preachy ??
Just having finished might not be the best time to review this book as I can find myself rethinking many of the topics this book contained. Sometimes I REALLY liked the way Russo worded various passages. Other times I thought “only a guy could like this book” or “I can totally see dumb guys doing this”. So I’m not sure. I think I liked it, but I did feel that some of the character developments went on for too long. However I very much liked how this story ended,in fact it was my favorite part of the book. So for now my numbers stand bit as time goes on, I reserve the right to change them.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Mamabetz
- 08-26-19
Best part is the title
I have loved Russo's earlier work, but this one indulges in way too much navel-gazing.
Being of an age that makes it easy to recall the historical details of the 1970s, I could easily relate to the characters in their time and place. But the somewhat interesting plot line was constantly derailed while each character explored every side of every thought, past and present. It got old way before the end.
I did like the frequent reference to the way chance impacts our existence, especially as he kept referring to the lyrics of the Johnny Mathis song, "Chances Are."
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11 people found this helpful
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- Richard Delman
- 08-14-19
Not his best but not bad
Richard Russo has been one of my favorite authors for decades, but like many other artists, his peak was before age fifty (you could look it up). The books he wrote in the beginning were marvelous, full of wry humor, terrific characters and interesting plots. You might complain about his locations, all New England, and his people, all white and preppy with the great exception of Tully, perhaps his most memorable character. This book is about growing old, with the same setting, Martha's Vineyard, and the same ethnicities, three white men age sixty-six and a white woman of the same age. This foursome has been in touch with each other since going to Minerva College. The men have been in love with the woman, Jacy, for the entire four decades. Their reunion is the story. It is tempestuous although kinda tame. The characters are quirky. One of the dads of these guys is named, no kidding, Wolfgang Amadeus Moser. Really. This is as big a gaffe as I have ever seen Russo make. It is a preposterous name. The "love affairs" between Lincoln, Teddy, Mickey and Jacy are sympathetic and touching. There is a rollicking bad guy. There is violence, and sex, drugs and rock and roll, earsplittingly loud. The book is way too long. Where are the editors these days? The book could be cut by a third or more and it would be significantly improved. Not his best.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Timo
- 08-09-19
Uplifting and Engaging
Faces the free will dilemma with honesty and caring, Breathes life into characters deftly drawn. One of Russo's best (which says a lot).
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8 people found this helpful
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- Ellen A. Hernandez
- 09-06-19
not my favorite Russo
This could have been a very fine short story instead. In fact, the chapter entitled "Mickey" would have sufficed.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Gary Eisen
- 07-31-19
Thanks!
Always look forward to a new book from Richard, he has written another wonderful story with enjoyable characters. I hope we get another some day soon.
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4 people found this helpful
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- willa litvack
- 09-15-19
A Mixed Bag
There are great elements but parts of the story seem contrived. Character development is similarly uneven.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Cecelia Krajcar
- 08-14-19
Great Read
This was a page turner for me. The narrator’s voice is clear and strong. One of those books that I do not want to end. I never guessed the outcome. The characters were believable and likable. There were a couple of events I found to be unrealistic but for the whole of the novel I will let them slide.
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Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents’ respite from the hated Midwest.
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Instantly-recognizable Richard Russo book
- By Fred Pike on 10-04-09
By: Richard Russo
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Mohawk
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A first novel with all the assurance of a mature writer at the peak of form and ambition, Mohawk is set in upstate New York and chronicles more than a dozen lives in a leather town, long after the tanneries have started closing down. Ranging over three generations - and clustered mainly in two clans, the Grouses and the Gaffneys - these remarkably various lives share only the common human dilemmas and the awesome physical and emotional presence of Mohawk itself.
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Narrator sounds like a computer
- By anne on 02-20-19
By: Richard Russo
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Sh*tshow
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
David and Ellie didn’t realize how much they have missed their friends, two other couples who had moved out of their modest neighborhood in a desert city for the comforts of the suburbs, until the day of Donald Trump’s election. Separated also from their daughter who lived hours away in California, they were in a funk. But, when Ellie discovers a repellent offering floating in the small Jacuzzi in their backyard, David is blindsided. Little does he know this is but the first in a chain of grisly events that would play out in their lives with devastating consequences.
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Should have paid more attention to the title
- By Susan K. on 06-11-22
By: Richard Russo
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Straight Man
- A Novel
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Sam Freed
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park.
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Straight Man
- By Holly Abery-Wetstone on 10-17-03
By: Richard Russo
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Nobody's Fool
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 24 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith.
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Wonderful Book Fabulous Narrator
- By Marsha on 04-27-05
By: Richard Russo
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Bridge of Sighs
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 26 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Louis Charles ("Lucy") Lynch has spent all his 60 years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for 40 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.
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Wonderful
- By Victoria Wright on 10-08-07
By: Richard Russo
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That Old Cape Magic
- A Novel
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents’ respite from the hated Midwest.
-
-
Instantly-recognizable Richard Russo book
- By Fred Pike on 10-04-09
By: Richard Russo
-
Mohawk
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A first novel with all the assurance of a mature writer at the peak of form and ambition, Mohawk is set in upstate New York and chronicles more than a dozen lives in a leather town, long after the tanneries have started closing down. Ranging over three generations - and clustered mainly in two clans, the Grouses and the Gaffneys - these remarkably various lives share only the common human dilemmas and the awesome physical and emotional presence of Mohawk itself.
-
-
Narrator sounds like a computer
- By anne on 02-20-19
By: Richard Russo
-
Sh*tshow
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David and Ellie didn’t realize how much they have missed their friends, two other couples who had moved out of their modest neighborhood in a desert city for the comforts of the suburbs, until the day of Donald Trump’s election. Separated also from their daughter who lived hours away in California, they were in a funk. But, when Ellie discovers a repellent offering floating in the small Jacuzzi in their backyard, David is blindsided. Little does he know this is but the first in a chain of grisly events that would play out in their lives with devastating consequences.
-
-
Should have paid more attention to the title
- By Susan K. on 06-11-22
By: Richard Russo
-
Straight Man
- A Novel
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Sam Freed
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park.
-
-
Straight Man
- By Holly Abery-Wetstone on 10-17-03
By: Richard Russo
-
Nobody's Fool
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 24 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith.
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Wonderful Book Fabulous Narrator
- By Marsha on 04-27-05
By: Richard Russo
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Elsewhere
- A Memoir
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Richard Russo
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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.
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Elsewhere---but not far enough
- By William on 12-08-12
By: Richard Russo
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Empire Falls
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Dexter County, Maine, and specifically the town of Empire Falls, has seen better days, and for decades, in fact, only a succession from bad to worse. One by one, its logging and textile enterprises have gone belly-up, and the once vast holdings of the Whiting clan (presided over by the last scion’s widow) now mostly amount to decrepit real estate. The working classes, meanwhile, continue to eke out whatever meager promise isn’t already boarded up. Miles Roby gazes over this ruined kingdom from the Empire Grill, an opportunity of his youth that has become the albatross of his life.
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Hugely Enjoyable
- By margaret on 01-23-12
By: Richard Russo
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Trajectory
- Stories
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin, Arthur Morey, Fred Sanders, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Russo's characters in these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from many of his novels. In "Horseman", a professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday looms closer and closer: "And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention", a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward - or not.
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Melancholy but Rewarding
- By David on 07-08-17
By: Richard Russo
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The Destiny Thief
- Essays on Writing, Writers and Life
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Richard Russo
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America's most beloved authors.
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The Destiny Thief
- By anne on 08-22-18
By: Richard Russo
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The Whore's Child and Other Stories
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Robertson Dean, Arthur Morey, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A cynical Hollywood moviemaker confronts his dead wife’s lover and abruptly realizes the depth of his own passion. As his parents’ marriage disintegrates, a precocious fifth-grader distracts himself with meditations on baseball, spaghetti, and his place in the universe. And in the title story, an elderly nun enters a college creative writing class and plays havoc with its tidy notions of fact and fiction. The Whore’s Child is further proof that Russo is one of the finest writers we have.
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Worth the Download
- By Delah on 10-31-11
By: Richard Russo
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It Occurs to Me That I Am America
- New Stories and Art
- By: Richard Russo, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, and others
- Narrated by: Christian Barillas, Francois Chau, Kyla Garcia, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story