Everybody's Fool once again takes us to the small upstate New York town of North Bath just a bit more than a decade after the events of Nobody's Fool. The town is still the hapless poor relation of its neighboring town and chief rival Schuyler Springs and on the surface things seem pretty much as we left them. But, inevitably, time has made a few changes at least in the cast of characters.
Sadly, Miss Beryl, the woman who taught eighth grade for many years at the local school and whom we met as Donald (Sully) Sullivan's beloved landlady in the last book, is no longer on the scene. However, even though she may be physically absent, her spirit lingers and as we visit North Bath this time around, the town is getting ready to honor her memory during Memorial Day festivities by renaming the school after her.
Sully is still there and he and Miss Beryl seem to have exchanged roles. For many years, he had been her boarder in her big Victorian house on North Main Street; now it seems that Miss Beryl is his boarder, having taken up residence in his head where she continues to carry on the conversations that they both enjoyed over the years.
Most of the other quirky characters that we met in Nobody's Fool are still here, with a few changes in their circumstances. Doug Raymer, the policeman whom we last saw accidentally discharging his gun and getting decked by Sully, is now, surprisingly, the chief of police. He is beset by insecurities, believing that he is no good at his job and, furthermore, he is obsessed to the point of distraction over learning the identity of the man that his wife had been planning to run away with a year earlier. The getaway had never happened because she was killed in a freak accident as she was getting ready to leave.
Poor hapless Rub Squeers is still around, as well, still beset by worries that he's not really Sully's best friend. But at least his financial circumstances are somewhat improved since he now has a regular job with the city.
It is Sully's circumstances that have changed most drastically. He had an incredible run of good luck following the end of Nobody's Fool and, finally, in his eighth decade, he is free of worry about where his next dollar is coming from.
All is not rosy for Sully, however. A life of drinking too much, smoking too much, eating the wrong things, and generally not taking care of his body is catching up with him. The cardiologists at the VA clinic have told him that, at best, he might have two years left, but more likely one, and he's often in pain and out of breath. But irascible and stubborn as ever. His friends, including Ruth, the woman with whom he carried on an affair for so many years, worry about him. They can see that something is wrong, but he hasn't confided in any of them.
One new character bears mentioning. Charice works behind a desk at the police department and longs to get out into the field and do real police work. She is the smartest person in the department and she harbors an affection for the chief although she would never let on. Raymer, likewise, has an unacknowledged interest in Charice, but would this stuck-in-the-past town ever accept a white police chief's romantic alliance with a black subordinate?
And so time and events rock on in North Bath. People plan and scheme and mostly their plans and schemes go awry. A very bad guy finally gets his comeuppance but not before he has done inestimable harm to others. And the irrepressible Sully faces his own mortality.
Richard Russo really knows how to tell a story of these small towns. He fills North Bath with characters that are irresistibly human with all their foibles and sometimes their unexpected nobility. He tells their stories with great humor and empathy and makes us see them as three-dimensional individuals that we can care about and perhaps learn from. That is a significant achievement by a writer and Russo excels at it.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Richard Russo's fictional North Bath is a blue-collar town in upstate New York, a town where luck ran out a hundred years before when the springs that made it a popular spa town dried up. The town has been dying a slow death since then. It seems that nothing good ever happens there.
We visit the town in the fall of 1984. Ronald Reagan is president but his "Morning in America" certainly has not dawned in North Bath.
Nevertheless, there is hope on the horizon in the form of a theme park called the Ultimate Escape that may be built near the town, breathing in some much-needed life. The main booster of this putative theme park is the local banker Clive Peoples, Jr., perhaps the only purely unlikable character in this novel featuring smart-alecky, low-key characters.
Clive has a mother, eighty-year-old widow Beryl Peoples, a retired teacher who lives in one of North Bath's ancient houses, "aging clapboard Victorians and sprawling Greek Revivals that would have been worth some money if they were across the border in Vermont." Her house is located on North Main Street, which is lined by venerable elm trees that have so far escaped Dutch elm disease and which every winter release one or more limbs which crash into one of the ancient houses. Every winter, Miss Beryl is convinced that this will be the winter when the trees lower the boom on her house.
Miss Beryl taught English literature to several generations of eighth graders at the local public school. She was a strict grammarian and a tough teacher, but she always had a soft spot for one of her students, Donald Sullivan, Sully to all of his friends. He doesn't really seem to have any enemies, but with friends like his, who needs them?
Sully is a 60-year-old incorrigible underachiever and for twenty years he has lived as a tenant on the second floor of Miss Beryl's house. They have a comfortable easy-going relationship. Truthfully, Miss Beryl is much closer to Sully than she is to her son, whom Sully refers to as "The Bank."
Sully is divorced and for a couple of decades has been carrying on a halfhearted affair with another man's wife. He is estranged from his only son, who he took no part in raising, leaving all that to his ex-wife and her new husband, the estimable Ralph who proved to be a good father to Peter. Sully is badly crippled, having fallen and injured his left knee while on a job. The knee hasn't healed properly and has developed arthritis. It swells up like a balloon every day.
Our hero has been collecting partial disability payments and as a condition of that has been going to the local community college for classes in how to repair air conditioners. Since he needed one more course in his curriculum, he chose to take a course in philosophy. But now, against the advice of his lawyer and everyone who cares about him, he's decided to give all of that up and go back to work doing casual labor.
We follow Sully around town as he goes on his daily rounds, starting with checking in to make sure Miss Beryl is still alive, then on to breakfast at the diner, a visit to the OTB parlor, and to whatever dirty job he's been hired to do that day, usually aided by his best friend, Rub, and finally back to the bar in the evening. Along the way, he interacts with most of the denizens of this town including his lawyer, his ex-wife and her husband, his son and family who are visiting from West Virginia, his estranged lover, the local businessman who usually employs him and the man's beautiful wife on whom Sully has a major crush.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat. This is the story of North Bath and the story of Sully.
Well, things do happen. Punches get thrown. People go crazy. Families break up. Sully steals a snowblower. Repeatedly. And so it goes.
But if that sounds boring, it really isn't. Russo insinuates his characters into our hearts and makes us care about them and their everyday, mundane lives. We feel privileged to be able to see into the lives of these people and to eavesdrop on their conversations. In fact, those conversations are the best part of this book. The characters are quick and inventive in their dialogue and they delight in giving each other a hard time. Smart-alecks all. I enjoyed my time with them.
That being said, this book was very long at some 560 pages and part of that was because it included many minor characters who did not really contribute to the plot. Peter's grad school nympho girlfriend, for example. What real purpose did she serve?
Moreover, I confess I was disconcerted by the use of the N-word in referring to North Bath's only black man. The word certainly fit within the context of the sarcastic dialogue of the novel and it clearly was not meant to be offensive, but, really, was that necessary?
So, with a bit of stricter editing, this would definitely have been a five-star read. As it is, I'll give it four glowing stars.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
