The Whore's Child: Summary and book reviews of The Whore's Child by Richard Russo, plus links to an excerpt from The Whore's Child and a biography of Richard Russo.
The Whore's Child
by Richard Russo
Hardcover: Jul 2002,
272 pages.
Paperback: Jul 2003,
272 pages.
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling Empire Falls—also named the year's best novel by Time—Richard Russo now focuses, in his first book of short fiction, on a fresh and fascinating range of human behavior. With a fluency of tone that will surprise even his devoted readers, he captures both bewildering horror and heartrending tenderness with an absorbing, compassionate authority.
We warm to these newcomers—as to all Russo's characters—almost despite ourselves. A jaded Hollywood moviemaker uncovers a decades-old flame he never knew he'd harbored. A precocious fifth grader puzzles over life, love and baseball as he watches his parents' marriage dissolve. Another child is forced into a harrowing cross-country escape whose actual purpose he learns only after the fact. An elderly couple rediscovers the power, and the misery, of their relationship during a long-awaited retreat to a resort island. And in the title story, a septuagenarian nun invades the narrator's college writing workshop with an incredible saga.
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Russo's rueful understanding of the twisted skein of human relationships is as sharp as ever, and the dialogue throughout is barbed, pointed and wryly humorous. The collection is a winner.
Library Journal
A first collection from Russo, who did so splendidly last year with Empire Falls.
Booklist - JoanneWilkinson
Despite the darkness of his themes, all of the stories are told with great authority and near flawless technique.
Kirkus Reviews
There may be more important writers around, but none is more likable, or more dependably entertaining and rewarding, than Russo.
The New Yorker
There is a big, wry heart beating at the center of Russo's fiction.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
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of 5
by Jessa
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