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130th out of 554 books
—
602 voters
Elsewhere
After eight commanding works of fiction, the Pulitzer Prize winner now turns to memoir in a hilarious, moving, and always surprising account of his life, his parents, and the upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escape.
Anyone familiar with Richard Russo'sacclaimed novelswill recognize Gloversville once famous for producing that eponymous product and anythi...more
Anyone familiar with Richard Russo'sacclaimed novelswill recognize Gloversville once famous for producing that eponymous product and anythi...more
Hardcover, 256 pages
Published
October 30th 2012
by Knopf
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This book is more "mom"-oir than memoir. You won't learn much about Rick Russo except as it relates to his mother's inescapable grip on him. Jean Russo was one doozy of a dippy demanding dame. She taught Rick to think of himself and his mother as essentially one person -- "You and me against the world." Even as an adult, he couldn't break free of her hold on him. For over 35 years he catered to her ridiculous demands, which cost him a fortune financially and mentally.
Ever since Rick was a boy,...more
Ever since Rick was a boy,...more
As with Isabelle Allende's memoirs, I was interested to see how much of real life Richard Russo used for his novels like Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool, especially since the most outrageous things generally turn out to be the true ones. In this case, Russo is heart-breakingly open about his early life in a dying upstate New York mill town, his ne'er do well gambler father, his devoted mother who is...too devoted and eventually diagnosed with OCD and crippling anxiety, his incredibly tolerant wif...more
In this memoir, Russo writes extensively about his love-hate relationship with his mother and his difficulty in reconciling her life just as much as her death. As I am a fan of characters over plot, I enjoyed the complexities of her neuroses and the ways in which Russo's family navigated about them.
The woman's habitual unhappiness, refusal to accept blame, or indeed, reality, and her inability to remain settled despite all that had been compromised for her accommodation was, to me, unsettlingly...more
The woman's habitual unhappiness, refusal to accept blame, or indeed, reality, and her inability to remain settled despite all that had been compromised for her accommodation was, to me, unsettlingly...more
I heart Richard Russo. In his memoir, Russo describes himself as an author who is an optimist. I agree, and his optimism and talent shine through in Elsewhere.
Russo's memoir focuses on his relationship with his mother. The storytelling is Russo at his best. He makes the everyday stories of everyday people wonderfully engaging. And why not! Most of us consider our own stories to be interesting, no matter how common. (Evidence: this stupid blog... he he!) Russo adroitly taps into this positive con...more
Russo's memoir focuses on his relationship with his mother. The storytelling is Russo at his best. He makes the everyday stories of everyday people wonderfully engaging. And why not! Most of us consider our own stories to be interesting, no matter how common. (Evidence: this stupid blog... he he!) Russo adroitly taps into this positive con...more
I love Richard Russo's writing and there were passages in this painful book that, as usual, made me laugh out loud. But it *is* a painful read, dealing as it does with a child's eye view of his mother's insatiable need to be "elsewhere," her uncontrollable worry and anxiety, and her inability to be happy anywhere. Since he was an only child and she was a divorced mother, his mother convinced him that it was the two of them against the world. Russo spent his entire life trying to help her find an...more
After years of writing critically acclaimed novels and short stories, Richard Russo turns his pen to memoir, and once again dazzles readers with his quick wit and pathos. His most recent effort, Elsewhere, is the story of his formative years in Gloversville New York, his tumultuous relationship with this mother, and how these two factors profoundly influenced both his writing and the man he would become. Readers familiar with his fiction will immediately see the resemblance of Gloversville to th...more
I read this book, and found myself comparing the history of my family with Richard Russo. I come from an Italian family too (however, i have brothers and sisters); and my mother is right now suffering from alzeimer too. Although my mother wasn't a single mother, she did obsess constantly about being back or going back to Italy. Nothing in the U.S. (not even her husband) could satisfy her.
That said, Richard Russo's book may as well be called "LIving with Mother" or "How I survived living with a v...more
That said, Richard Russo's book may as well be called "LIving with Mother" or "How I survived living with a v...more
As with all of Richard Russo's work (Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool), this book rings with wonderful and colorful writing. But I guess his story just hit too close to home for me to enjoy it.
Mr. Russo spends his life--and sacrifices his time and loyalty to his own wife and family--trying to placate his irrational mother. He's the only child of a needy single mother: wherever he goes, she goes, even to college. It's clear that she is mentally unstable, but incredibly, Mr. Russo doesn't see that unti...more
Mr. Russo spends his life--and sacrifices his time and loyalty to his own wife and family--trying to placate his irrational mother. He's the only child of a needy single mother: wherever he goes, she goes, even to college. It's clear that she is mentally unstable, but incredibly, Mr. Russo doesn't see that unti...more
I'm always positive that I will not really enjoy a memoir and more often than not, I love them! It helps if the memoir is written by an author I love or luckily a great memoir written by a friend (Everyone should read "A Mountain of Crumbs" by Elena Gorokhova!). In "Elsewhere," Richard Russo writes mostly about his mother and her quest for a better life for herself and for her only son. She is a single parent and wants so much more out of life than the small upstate New York town offers most peo...more
Mar 03, 2013
tina
added it
I like Richardo Russo no matter what. This memoir must have been extremely difficult for him to write. With his fiction he seems to get a lot of inspiration from real people and blend make new ones. Can't do that with a memoir. This memoir deals exclusively with his mother, a person who has taken up so much space throughout his entire life. What a figure. This book is no small feat, and I imagine that Russo could have made this book much, much longer, filling it with tons of rich episodes. Inste...more
We all knew that Empire Falls was a real place, and in this book we encounter the actual Gloversville. The theme of this story is less about place, however, than person -- that person being Russo's enigmatic, eccentric mother. In "Elsewhere" we witness yet another example of a child not knowing more than his own reality and deeming it normal, when in fact it is more than a bubble off typical. Russo's acceptance of and devotion to his mother is phenomenal; even more amazing is his wife's willingn...more
So here's a memoir focused on a man's relationship with his mentally ill mother. You'd think it would be sad, depressing, frustrating. Not so. It's all about survival and resilience. True, some things don't get better: the author's hometown of Gloversville, NY, went downhill after the glove factories closed, much like my neighboring hometown of Amsterdam, NY, when the carpet mills moved out. Russo writes about the pollution and the disregard for workers' health, and the common identity and pride...more
I'm not sure why I chose to read this book -a memoir (outside my usual genre) but I was drawn into the concept of "elsewhere" and "mother attachments".
You have to stick to the end of the narrative if you want some satisfaction from the memoir - most of the book is a repetitive recount of each of his mother's "moves" around the country following her son and the son "saintly" at her beck and call all through the chronicle of their life. We learn very little about his mother or the author as indivi...more
You have to stick to the end of the narrative if you want some satisfaction from the memoir - most of the book is a repetitive recount of each of his mother's "moves" around the country following her son and the son "saintly" at her beck and call all through the chronicle of their life. We learn very little about his mother or the author as indivi...more
I had never read Richard Russo but I had thought about it several times, especially after seeing him last year at the Tucson Festival of Books. A friend of mine, who is a New Yorker, is a fan, mostly I thought because Russo too is a native New Yorker and writes about New York. I confess to having something of a love relationship with that great place myself even though I wasn't born and raised there. I picked up the audio of this book at the library thinking that it was a memoir of his life. It...more
I almost didn't read this book. In fact, I got it out of the library and had to return it unread because I ran out of time. However, I got it out again and read it in a short time, and I'm glad I did. Russo has always been one of my favorite writers. His prose is wonderful. I love his subject matter - especially his books that are based on his hometown in upstate New York. This one is incredibly heart-wrenching. Russo comes from a small town called Gloverville, a place that was once well known f...more
I was so excited when I saw that Richard Russo had written a memoir, eager to learn more about the life of this fine writer. The book is disappointing in that it is primarily a story of the relationship between Richard and his mother, and a very dysfunctional one at that.
Having come from the depressed Gloversville, New York, his mother drags Richard-and later herself-from pillar to post, fleeing God knows what for God knows what. I was amazed that Richard never put his foot down with his mothe...more
Having come from the depressed Gloversville, New York, his mother drags Richard-and later herself-from pillar to post, fleeing God knows what for God knows what. I was amazed that Richard never put his foot down with his mothe...more
I was disappointed with Richard Russo’s memoir Elsewhere but I had difficulty articulating precisely why until I read Jane McDonnell’s Living to Tell the Tale. I’ll quote the introductory paragraph to her book in its entirety because it is inspirational:
Writing is a second chance at life. Although we can never go back in time to change the past, we can re-experience, interpret and make peace with our past lives. When we write a personal narrative we find new meanings and, at the same time, we di...more
Writing is a second chance at life. Although we can never go back in time to change the past, we can re-experience, interpret and make peace with our past lives. When we write a personal narrative we find new meanings and, at the same time, we di...more
Richard Russo, a native of Gloversville, New York (not far from my hometown of Schenectady) and a highly respected novelist, probes his sad, funny, puzzling, frustrating experiences with his mother Jean in this superbly-written memoir. "You do know your mother's nuts, right?" Russo's father said to him one summer when they were working construction. (The two divorced when Russo was very young.) Actually, Russo didn't; and this comment was an eye-opener to the teenager, that the woman who could b...more
I have long been a fan of Russo’s fiction; having read his memoir, I am a fan of the man (and would nominate his wife for sainthood). Russo was raised by his divorced mother, Jean, in a bleak upstate New York town that had been a thriving manufacturing hub until men stopped wearing hats and women stopped wearing dress gloves. The place was so depressed that by 1967, when Russo graduated from high school, "you could have strafed Main Street with an automatic weapon without endangering a soul.” Ru...more
Dec 14, 2012
Holly Morrow
added it
Loved this book. Russo starts at the beginning - growing up in a mill town in Upstate NY in the 1950s, and describes the transformation it underwent from thriving middle class town (downtown packed with shoppers on a Saturday) in the postwar period to dying rusted relic by the late 1960s - basically, the story of manufacturing in America. His hometown becomes the basis for many of the novels he goes on to write when he becomes a successful author. His father is a drunk and a gambler, and his par...more
And so my major crush on Richard Russo continues. I'm not exactly sure why I like this guy's books so much. He's not a flashy writer, nor particularly chewy, and his novels, usually set in depressed rust-belt towns in upstate New York, don't exactly come at you with big new ideas about the human condition. And yet I've loved them all, for their heart, their generosity of spirit, and his talent for bringing people to life, whether in a few sentences or over the course of hundreds of pages. He als...more
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Do not waste your time reading this book.
I read it like the dutiful son Russo, the author, is: because it is his mother who constantly asks him to take her places ("my son will do that", she always insists at the sight of assisted-living and nursing home shuttle buses), he does it. Because the author is someone who is nice, I thought, I should finish reading this book.
But I didn't want to. It bugged me. Why would I want to read about a nagging old woman who insists on following her son across t...more
I read it like the dutiful son Russo, the author, is: because it is his mother who constantly asks him to take her places ("my son will do that", she always insists at the sight of assisted-living and nursing home shuttle buses), he does it. Because the author is someone who is nice, I thought, I should finish reading this book.
But I didn't want to. It bugged me. Why would I want to read about a nagging old woman who insists on following her son across t...more
When we love our authors, we want every book they write to be a winner (see my review of Mark Helprin's latest as a case in point...). I was very interested in reading Richard Russo's latest -- a memoir -- because I thought Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool and Straight Man (three of his) were terrific. Perhaps I'm not a memoir fan, but I was disappointed in this one. I did not think it was up to his fiction standard of quality. First, as I've written in other reviews, this book needed an editor with...more
Richard Russo is one of my avorite authors. I've read all of his books and loved all of them. This book is no exception. He calls it a memoir but it's mostly a book about his mother, who was to put it mildly, a handful. She was never happy with any situation she was in. It's also about Gloversville NY where he grew up. It was a factory town tanning leather and making gloves and other leather products. And not the garden spot of New York state. It was a hard and dangerous work with more of the to...more
I’ve been a fan of Richard Russo since the late 80s/early 90s, back when I was a teen and read The Risk Pool. I love his hardscrapple blue color characters and in reading this memoir it’s clear where much of his literary inspiration comes from.
This is mostly about his mother. She’s strong yet incredibly, frustratingly, annoyingly flawed. She had (undiagnosed) OCD but this is not really evident until the very end of the book after she’s already dead (no spoiler here, Russo’s an old guy himself) a...more
This is mostly about his mother. She’s strong yet incredibly, frustratingly, annoyingly flawed. She had (undiagnosed) OCD but this is not really evident until the very end of the book after she’s already dead (no spoiler here, Russo’s an old guy himself) a...more
This was a good read. I have read "Straight Man" which was one of the few books I've ever read that made me laugh out loud. This memoir is a touching book about his very complicated relationship with his mother, who was rarely far from him geographically and never far away emotionally. There are huge gaps of time in this narrative, though there is a numbingly predictable dynamic to their relationship that would have made making the book more detailed, well, very numbing. The powerful revelation...more
The maxim holds: the truth is stranger -- and often sadder -- than fiction. I am a fan of Richard Russo's novels, which often feature very flawed men letting down the women in their lives. His stories include some sorrow, a great deal humor, and always a flame of hope. Russo's own story is one of a more serious struggle with a mother who was always feeling more than just let down -- betrayed, really -- by the primary man in her life, Russo. The story of how they spent a lifetime together is frus...more
A lot of other reviewers have described this book as a "mom-oir" as opposed to a true "memoir", and it is - but not in a bad way (at least, not for me).
Briefly, Russo attempts to describe what it was like to grow up with his mom, Jean, who was a single mother in the small mill town of Gloversville, New York. Jean goes with Russo to college in Arizona and is a major factor in his life until her death.
It's a short memoir (under 300 pages), and it's probably not for everyone - it doesn't have the...more
Briefly, Russo attempts to describe what it was like to grow up with his mom, Jean, who was a single mother in the small mill town of Gloversville, New York. Jean goes with Russo to college in Arizona and is a major factor in his life until her death.
It's a short memoir (under 300 pages), and it's probably not for everyone - it doesn't have the...more
Let me start by admitting that I will read anything Russo has written. He is unpretentious, loves to just tell a story and you always feel like his narrators are just sitting down with you sharing a pint. This book is, as some have so aptly called it, a "mom-ior" rather than a true memior. It is the story of Russo and his mother and their close, if almost insular and unhealthy relationship. She is shown in all her warts and beauty marks. I guess I identified with the way he looks back after his...more
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Richard Russo (born July 15, 1949) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Born in Johnstown, New York, and raised in nearby Gloversville, he earned a B.A. (1967), a M.F.A. (1980), and a Ph.D. (1979) from the University of Arizona.
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“Novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming clutter Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five...”
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