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Published Jul 2019
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning Richard Russo--in his first stand-alone novel in a decade--comes a new revelation: a gripping story about the abiding yet complex power of friendship.
One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year old men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college circa the sixties. 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 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, more than forty years later, as this new weekend unfolds, three lives and that of a significant other are displayed in their entirety while the distant past confounds the present like a relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are ... also introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as constricting and rewarding as those of family or any other community.
For both longtime fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are ... is a stunning demonstration of a highly acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable achievement.
"No one understands men better than Russo, and no one is more eloquent in explaining how they think, suffer, and love." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"For his first stand-alone novel in 10 years, Russo has written a bewitching tale of male friendship with thriller elements ... This is vintage Russo with a cunning twist." - Carol Haggas, Booklist (starred review)
"Russo's first standalone novel in a decade mixes his signature themes—father-and-son relationships, unrequited love, New England small-town living, and the hiccups of aging—with stealthy clue-dropping in a slow-to-build mystery ... In the final stretch, surprising, long-kept secrets are revealed. This is vintage Russo." - Publishers Weekly
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Pic: Elena Siebert
Richard Russo is the author of ten novels, most recently Somebody's Fool, Chances Are…, Everybody's Fool and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody's Fool, was adapted into a multiple-award-winning miniseries; in 2017, he received France's Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Portland, Maine.
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