Comment

Jun 10, 2016
I loved Nobody's Fool, and had actually read that in 2015. I was delighted to hear that a sequel was available. I snapped it up right away, while the characters of North Bath still resonated in my brain. I know, there's a 'but' coming. And here it is: I wanted to love this book. Oh how I did. However, I did not find myself as immersed as I was in the first book. Sully has aged, and have a lot of the players in the first book, of course. Because of this, there is less of a focus on these characters, and more so, on marginal ones of the first, and some new ones. I, sadly, did not find them as engaging this time around. The wryness is still there, and it is a tonic to the book. I wanted to be engaged, but as the book took more tangents with less interesting characters, I found myself wondering why I wasn't more riveted. The fact was, with 'Nobody' Sully was unmistakeably the main, flawed, warts and all, character. This time round, Russo has peopled the book with more diverse swathe of people - I think it made the book less focused and, sadly, less readable. For me, Empire Falls was the high water mark. Classic reader lament: why couldn't it be more like . . . enter title of reader's favorite book by that author!