Richard Russo rocks

There are some contemporary authors whose work simply rises to another level: Barbara Kingsolver, Jhumpa Lahiri, Edward P. Jones. To that group, I hereby add Richard Russo.

I loved "Empire Falls," his story about Miles Roby, the fortysomething owner of a greasy spoon in a depressed New England town, that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. But in my never-ending quest to get around to other authors I haven't read, I hadn't picked up another Russo book until now. And just having finished "Bridge of Sighs," I can only express my admiration for Russo's multiple abilities.

It's not just the mastery he displays in crafting a sentence or a paragraph, nor in exploring a character's inner dialogue. It's his vision in framing the larger narrative, in this case an authentic portrait of blue-collar life in a dying town in upstate New York, and skill in weaving together the strands of three teenagers and their families who struggle with their decisions about whether to stay in or flee from Thomaston.

The narrator is Louis Charles Lynch, named after his dad and forever stuck with the nickname Lucy. He is the perennial optimist, naive to a fault, just like his dad, Louis Patrick Lynch, who's known as Big Lou and who refuses to believe his job as a milk deliveryman is at risk. Lucy's best friend is Bobby Marconi, the brooding son of a brutish, womanizing father and a timid, housebound mother who's perpetually pregnant. Both boys fall for Sarah Berg, the artistic daughter of a divorced couple: Dad is a rumpled, neurotic wannabe author who teaches English at the local high school, and Mom is  an over-the-hill beauty who lives in New York City.

Each of the three friends has a chance to leave their dying town. What each one does -- and how he or she comes to that decision -- makes for a compelling story. Over the course of 641 pages, I found myself marveling at Russo's storytelling and empathizing with his characters as they struggled, even agonized, over questions of right and wrong and weighed their self-interests against the feelings and aspirations of others. If only more people in real life had such depth.

Three questions, in particular, stayed with me because they are all about perspective:

Lucy, as an adult is discussing his ailing father with his mom, when he asks: "Why is it so important to you that I remember him as you do?"

Later, he asks himself: "Who cares about a single life beyond the one whose task it is to live it? Am I not entitled to my life as my mother is to hers? Must there be a version that reconciles all the versions, large or small? Can there be?"

And, finally, Sarah, seeing how lonely and fearful her mother has become as an aging divorcee, weighs passion and independence against companionship and friendship, sacrifice against compromise. "Suddenly she understood the question she'd really been trying to ask all summer. Which was more important: to love or be loved?"

I found "Bridge of Sighs" to be a novel of warmth and rich texture, an immensely satisfying read. I'd love to dive into another of Russo's books but I'm afraid he's going to have wait. Still too many authors I want to read.