Everybody’s Fool: A novel

Richard Russo has written some really good books, but I find it hard to read about boring, meaningless lives once again. We have met these characters in previous books. What more is there to say about them? They are all dolts who bumble their way through smalltown life. The police chief holds onto a garage door opener. If it can open a garage, it can lead the police chief to his dead wife’s lover. Police chief Raymer is obsessed with finding the identity of the man. Meanwhile there is a grave digger, a friend of Sully. Perhaps the grave digger is meant to allude to Hamlet because Sully doesn’t take action to cure his bad knee or his heart condition. Sully had been introduced as a character in a previous book, Nobody’s Fool.

This is a book where nothing really happens, despite the brutality of Russo’s villain. It does take skill to write a large book about hum drum characters, but I found it difficult to stay engaged with any of the stories or subplots. I do, however, recommend Russo’s previous book Empire Falls.