The Risk Pool

by Richard Russo

A wonderfully fun and perceptive novel in the traditions of Thornton Wilder and Anne Tyler, The Risk Pool is set in Mohawk, New York, where Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called adult.

His father, Sam, cultivates bad habits so assiduously that he is stuck at the bottom of his auto insurance risk pool. His mother, Jenny, is slowly going crazy from resentment at a husband who refuses either to stay or to stay away. As Ned veers between allegiances to these grossly inadequate role models, Richard Russo gives us a book that overflows with outsized characters and outlandish predicaments and whose vision of family is at once irreverent and unexpectedly moving.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Contemporary, Literature, Book Club, Coming Of Age

492 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

RICHARD RUSSO is the author of seven previous novels; two collections of stories; and Elsewhere, a memoir. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which like Nobody’s Fool was adapted to film, in a multiple-award-winning HBO miniseries.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

1) This is like a very gentle version of the way the British sergeant-major explained how he lectures his troops :

"First I tells 'em what I'm going to tell 'em. Then I tells 'em. Then I tells 'em what I told 'em."

Because Richard Russo's middle name is Repetition. His full name is Richard Repetition Russo. Now I'm doing it. Must be catching. How many times were we told that the protagonist's father had a blackened thumb and forefinger? At least once every five pages. How many times did the father cuff the son's head? About once every two pages. How many times did the father not pay his bills? About once every other paragraph.

2) This is your standard autobiographical novel about growing up in small town America. There are a lot of these. It's a loving melancholy examination of flawed people, especially the father. Especially the father.

3) The story, if there is a story, and I'm not too sure, crawls along at about seven miles an hour. You could out-walk this story easily. By the time you got to the end of the street Richard Russo would be just about finishing describing lacing up his shoes.

4) He mulls. He ruminates. He describes. He worries. He considers.

5) He's a good writer. But he ain't the writer I need right now. This novel has 480 pages in it. All full of words describing the father's fatuous, aggravating, inept, boorish and yet strangely awesome ways. Yes, it seemed to me to be a kind of hymn to the great unlettered manly man, the guy who can shoot great pool, romance the new barmaid with some homely come-on lines, fix up the permanently ailing Oldsmobile, pick a winner, play a hell of a poker game but never earn a decent wage for more than two consecutive months. Thing is, I think we have had enough love letters from writers to these kind of guys to last us a lifetime. So eventually, about half-way through, I thought : not gonna finish this one.

6) I really don't like not finishing novels which I think are actually pretty good. But I don't want pretty good anymore. I want to get zapped in the ventricles by something unexpectedly great, something I didn't see coming. I probably want too much.

[☮Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the other Russo books I've read have been written from the perspective of an adult male, and usually heavily influenced by their mothers, set in some downtrodden small town in Upstate New York.  In "The Risk Pool", Ned is a boy when he begins his narration, living with his mother, while his unreliable father Sam is more or less out of the picture. When he is in the picture, it's an ugly one, so Ned knows he should avoid  the guy at all costs, despite his innate curiosity about him.  Then his mother becomes ill, and there is no choice but to move in with his rule-breaking, gambling (yet surprisingly loveable) father; and this induces major changes in Ned's personality--not necessarily a bad thing.

I often wonder where the autobiography ends and the fiction begins in his books. I'm  sure a great deal of him comes out in each one.   I read that Russo wrote this while his real father was dying.  If so, this is a touching tribute, loaded with anecdotes of their type of father/son relationship. Makes me think I'm a little in love with Russo the man. I know I am in love with Russo the author.

[Ak · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've decided richard russo is like u2 -- all his stuff sounds pretty much the same, but it's terrific, so i don't care.

the usual is all in evidence:
- lol-inducing humor
- affectionate brutal treatment of small-town folk and life (perfect internal echo: Sam constantly cuffing his son on the head to show how much he loves him)
- palpable rage against the socioeconomic forces and big business that slowly destroy his intimately beloved type of biosphere
- characters you feel you'd know at a 100 paces if you met them on the street (i hate the cliche "richly drawn characters", but it's apt with his work - he goes beyond that - they're richly 3-dimensionalized characters - he makes them more real than some people I actually know)
- you end up loving even the characters you hate (just as you feel RR does)... and
- deep puzzlement by, distrust of and sometimes outright dislike of women. (curious that i like him so much anyway...)

this novel is the most sprawly and repetitive of his that i've read- could've used a much tighter ed. hand, and, though effective, i got pretty sick of the uses of, e.g., "blackly" and "suspiciously" after the first hundred times- but, still, a so-so RR book is better than most most-other-people's best.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fourth of July, Mohawk Fair, Eat the Bird, and Winter.
I was an adult before I realized how cynical my grandfather’s observation was, his summer reduced to a single day; autumn to a third-rate mix of carnival rides, evil-smelling animals, mud and manure; Thanksgiving reduced to an obligatory carnivorous act, a “foul consumption,” he termed it; the rest Winter, capitalized. These became the seasons of my mother’s life ...

Richard Russo is the sort of writer who is basically writing the same story over and over, with slight variations in plot and character arcs, but always returning to the same setting of small town in a rundown area and to the relationship between family, friends and luck (or the lack of it). The fictional Mohawk and its denizens are not so different from those in “Empire Falls” or “Nobody’s Fool” yet the story of Ned Hall and of his thirty years quest to make sense of his relationship with his father Sam feels fresh and meaningful and important on its own. Because Richard Russo is so good at what he does, and because he speaks from the heart, about people that may be fictional, but who are so familiar to us who grew up in similar blue-collar communities, trying to make ends meet from one pay day to the next, wondering if it’s really worth fighting Winter all year long for a few days on unlikely sunshine and fun.

Most everybody in Mohawk lived pretty near the edge – of unemployment, of lunacy, of bankruptcy, of potentially hazardous ignorance, of despair – and hence the local custom was that you only worried about people nearest the brink.
Otherwise you’d worry yourself over the edge in short order, what with so many candidates for concern around.

Some people are better equipped to deal with hardship. They have thicker skins, more recklessness or less imagination than introverts who keep everything bottled up inside. Sam Hall came back from World War II with a huge thirst to make up for his lost years, so instead of looking for a steady job he is raising hell in Mohawk with his drinking and gambling and fighting. Not even the birth of his son Ned could pull Sam back on the straight and narrow path of respectable living. Not that there was much chance of a good job in this town in the post-war years.

The tanneries – the town’s lifeblood – conceded to be in temporary decline before the war, began to close down after its completion, victims of foreign competition and local greed.

Ned is raised by his single mother, a telephone operator, in his grandfather’s house, but the spectre of his violent father is always hovering over their door, culminating in an actual kidnapping of the young boy for a weekend of fishing in the wild. Ned is both fascinated and terrified by this absent father figure, but when his mother has a nervous breakdown after losing her job, Ned is forced to go live with Sam, and this opens up a whole new way of life for him.

She had waged her solitary war with the outside world too long.

The school of hard knocks is hardening Ned up, in preparation for the troubled years ahead. His father is mostly absent, doing temporary work in road construction in summer, and continuing with his wild evenings of drinking and gambling and fighting in the ginmills around Mohawk, where he has the reputation of a hellraiser and the reputation of king of the underworld. Left to his own devices, Ned starts to do odd jobs for pocket money, to steal and to lie and to con his way among his father’s friends and drinking buddies, where everybody calls him ‘Sam’s Kid’.

For sheer complexity, there’s nothing like a horse race, excepting life itself, and keeping the myriad factors in balanced consideration is fine mental training, provided the student understands that even if he does this perfectly there is no guarantee of success. The scientific handicapper will never beat the horses, but he will learn to be alert for subtleties that escape the less trained eye. To weigh and evaluate a vast grid of information, much of it meaningless, and to arrive at sensible, if erroneous, conclusions, is a skill not to be sneezed off.

Handicapping horses for the daily races, recovering lost balls at the golf course and hanging out in the ginmills may have their appeal, but Ned has also the figure of his mother to make him worry about the future. He needs to find a way out of this vicious circle of poverty and misfortune that Mohawk symbolizes. The money he saves in the bank he hopes will be some form of insurance for this future, and the white mansion on the hill above the town makes him dream of another lifestyle, especially after he meets beautiful Tria Ward, the daughter of the mansion’s rich owner. this dream will also turn sour in later years, proving that nobody in Mohawk is insured against misfortune

Living under Sam Hall’s roof, I had become a thief and a liar. I’d made dangerous friends and knew too damn much of the world for my own good.

There is a ray of hope for Ned in his passion for books, developed naturally and unsupervised through his visits to the local library, his inquisitive mind and keen observation skills helping to keep the young boy on an even keel in this rocking boat that his father’s life represents.

I continued to read voraciously, almost everything except that which had been assigned, and years later I was told that I occasioned many an argument among my teachers, some of whom claimed I was a brilliant underachiever, others that I was just another homegrown militant moron.

In another place, this is how Ned describes the Mohawk Free Library:

... the joy of probing the opaque sentence until it surrendered something akin to meaning (this is what the son of a bitch meant!), making flexible (sometimes loosey-goosey, I fear) that which had been soldered stiff in a grimace of contorted syntax, giving energy and momentum to sentences stalled and flooded, like a carburetor, by leaden words. I was having a ball, and I do not regret in the least the many hours I labored over ‘The History of Mohawk County’.

The sins of his father catch up to Ned before his 14th birthday, in an evening of bloody confrontations and bitter recriminations. Ned escapes back to his mother’s care, released from internment in a mental institution with the help of a local lawyer. The story picks up ten years later, with Ned almost subconsciously sabotaging his post-graduate studies at the university of Nevada with compulsive drinking and gambling. The young man knows he needs to come back to Mohawk and exorcise the demons of his past.

... I was doing research in the concept of social hierarchy among primitive societies for my post-thesis in cultural anthropology. For this reason I had arranged to become a bartender in backwater upstate New York, where I would take notes and interview the denizens of local gin mills without their knowledge.

In order to protect the delicate balance of his mother’s mind, Ned concocts a tall tale that would hide his bankrupt finances and his absence from university. Yet this tall tale is a very good resume of the core of the novel – a study of the people living in a small town, done by an insider who grew up among them. Richard Russo created Mohawk not out of thin air, but from his own memories of growing up in Gloversville, New York. I believe this is what makes his characters so convincing, so memorable and so authentic. Each of these ‘minor’ characters deserves their own novel, their own review, which might explain why the author returns so often to the same setting.

>>><<<>>><<<

“Things get bad sometimes,” my father said, as if he thought that needed saying. “It’s nothing to worry about. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
I said sure, I understood.
“If it meant something, it’d be different,” he said. “But it’s just how things are.”

This stoic acceptance of the prevalence of Winter is a hard lesson to learn, especially for a young boy growing up. Even the older Ned has to struggle to accept his father’s wild abandon to the spinning wheel of luck, yet he feels irresistibly attracted by Sam’s vivacity, by his refusal to accept defeat, to hide away from life.

My father had written the book on walking away from things before I even came along. Perhaps luck was his gift to me. If so, I was grateful. After all, I could just as easily have taken after my mother, who had never walked away from anything, who paid and paid, compound interest, the principal always outstanding.

Mohawk though is an unlucky town. Every new year brings another couple of bankruptcies, another empty lot on the Main Street, another tale of a person losing their footing and going under, Winter lasts a couple of days longer here.
The risk pool is a term used by the insurance companies to describe people who pay exorbitant premiums due to their past mishaps or pre-existing conditions. Sam’s father is one of them, his reckless driving being the official reason for his premiums. Metaphorically, his whole lifestyle is under review by his handicapping savvy son, who often sees his own future reflected in smoky bar mirrors as he goes on another all-night drunk bender in the company of his father.

If one insisted on drawing a moral from [the stained glass window and the dead paperboy], it might have been that life was quirky at best and that being careful wasn’t much of a guarantee.

Once again Ned Hall comes to the conclusion that he must run away from Mohawk and from the people he loves is he wants his life to have a purpose, a direction forward. Once again, it is literature that offers an open door into a larger world, a view of new horizons. Once again the line between fiction and memoir is blurred by Richard Russo, but I for one am grateful for his decision to become such an accomplished wordsmith:

... the joy of probing the opaque sentence until it surrendered something akin to meaning (this is what the son of a bitch meant!), making flexible (sometimes loosey-goosey, I fear) that which had been soldered stiff in a grimace of contorted syntax, giving energy and momentum to sentences stalled and flooded, like a carburetor, by leaden words. I was having a ball, and I do not regret in the least the many hours I labored over ‘The History of Mohawk County’.

Me neither!

[David Carrasco · Rating 5 out of 5]

De niño uno tarda bastante en descubrir que los adultos también improvisan. Con los padres, el descubrimiento puede salir especialmente caro.

Ned Hall tiene la mala suerte de averiguarlo pronto: su madre se va desmoronando ante sus ojos y su padre, Sam, posee un talento casi sobrenatural para desaparecer precisamente cuando cualquier padre razonable consideraría oportuno estar presente.

Lo curioso es que Sam Hall resulta dificilísimo de odiar.

Ahí empieza, para mí, Alto riesgo. Richard Russo podría haber escrito la historia de un hijo marcado por un padre irresponsable, jugador, bebedor, egoísta y poco fiable. Material tenía de sobra. Pero Sam entra en cada escena con tal cantidad de vida que termina provocando algo bastante más complicado: uno entiende perfectamente el daño que causa y, cinco minutos después, está deseando volver a encontrárselo. Para compartir una cerveza con él, quizá. Para que te eduque, desde luego que no. Russo no parece completamente inmune a su encanto. Ned tampoco. Esa fascinación puede ser una debilidad de la novela o una de sus mayores verdades. Comprender a Sam sin permitir que esa comprensión borre la cuenta de daños es uno de los difíciles equilibrios sobre los que se sostiene el libro.

Ned cuenta desde la edad adulta una infancia y una juventud transcurridas en Mohawk, al norte del estado de Nueva York, entre una madre cada vez más frágil y ese padre que aparece y desaparece siguiendo unas reglas que solo él conoce. Para Ned, crecer consiste en aprender pronto que la estabilidad es algo que les ocurre a otras familias. Y también en descubrir que puede querer muchísimo a alguien cuya compañía le ha complicado considerablemente la vida.

Hay además una peculiaridad narrativa que termina diciendo mucho sobre esa relación: Ned cuenta su propia vida en primera persona, pero Sam se adueña una y otra vez de la novela. Es casi como si la autobiografía del hijo se convirtiera involuntariamente en la biografía del padre. Ned ha construido buena parte de su identidad observando a Sam, anticipando a Sam, sufriendo a Sam, admirando a Sam y tratando de comprender a Sam. Vista así, lo que desde fuera podría parecer pasividad adquiere una lógica: durante demasiado tiempo su manera de estar en el mundo ha consistido en reaccionar al hombre que ocupa el centro de gravedad de su vida.

Russo entiende esa contradicción de maravilla. Sam podría haberse convertido con facilidad en el villano de la historia o en uno de esos pícaros entrañables a los que la literatura perdona demasiado porque hacen gracia. No ocurre ninguna de las dos cosas. Su irresponsabilidad tiene consecuencias, algunas muy dolorosas, pero su capacidad de seducción también es real. Ned lo mira años después con una mezcla de afecto, cansancio, incredulidad y lucidez que me parece uno de los mayores aciertos de la novela. Evita redactar una factura atrasada contra su padre. Su mirada tiene otra intención: averiguar qué parte de ese hombre sigue viviendo dentro de él.

Y aquí hay un dato biográfico que cuesta mucho olvidar una vez conocido. Russo ha contado que Alto riesgo es su novela más autobiográfica y que Sam contiene mucho de su propio padre, aunque la ficción transforme radicalmente los hechos: Russo nunca llegó a convivir con él y, por eso, imaginó para Ned una proximidad paterna que él no había tenido. Durante algunos veranos sí trabajó junto a su padre en la construcción de carreteras y compartió con él ese mundo de obreros, bares, jornadas interminables y códigos masculinos que luego acabaría entrando en sus novelas.

Pero hay algo todavía más fuerte: Russo escribió Alto riesgo mientras su padre estaba muriendo. De repente, la ausencia de ajuste de cuentas adquiere otro peso. Mientras Ned intenta comprender a Sam, el escritor está convirtiendo en ficción a un hombre real al que está a punto de perder. Quizá por eso la novela puede permitirse algo más difícil que condenar o absolver: querer a alguien sin falsificar el daño que hizo.

En medio de todo eso aparece una de las grandes especialidades de Russo: hacerte reír justo donde parecería de mal gusto hacerlo.

El humor de Alto riesgo tiene algo defensivo. Los personajes bromean porque la alternativa sería reconocer hasta qué punto sus vidas se están deshaciendo. Quien haya leído Ni un pelo de tonto reconocerá enseguida el territorio: hombres que han convertido la chapuza vital en profesión, bares donde todo el mundo sabe demasiado de todo el mundo, amistades mantenidas a base de insultos, derrotas contadas como anécdotas y una comunidad que parece funcionar gracias a que nadie exige demasiado a nadie. Pero aquí encontré a un Russo más sombrío. Las risas siguen llegando, aunque dejan con bastante frecuencia algo desagradable en el fondo del vaso.

A Russo quizá se le pueda reprochar que lleva media vida regresando a territorios muy parecidos: pueblos del norte del estado de Nueva York que se caen lentamente a pedazos, padres que no saben ser padres, hombres que trabajan con las manos, beben demasiado y pasan buena parte de su existencia en los bares. Él mismo llegó a preguntarse si estaba repitiéndose. Pero, mira, a estas alturas empiezo a pensar que la repetición era precisamente el proyecto. Cambian los personajes y las circunstancias, pero Russo vuelve al mismo terreno para averiguar qué otra cosa puede encontrar allí. Y cuando ese mundo te gusta tanto como a mí, la familiaridad acaba teniendo algo de regreso a casa.

Porque mientras Ned crece, también envejece Mohawk. La ciudad industrial se va desgastando junto con sus habitantes: el trabajo escasea, las oportunidades se estrechan y la sensación de que hubo tiempos mejores empieza a instalarse en las conversaciones y en las casas. Russo conoce bien ese mundo y bajo el afecto con que retrata a sus habitantes hay también bastante rabia. La decadencia industrial impregna el paisaje y entra de lleno en las casas: detrás de los empleos que desaparecen, las oportunidades que se estrechan y las familias que sobreviven como pueden hay unas fuerzas económicas que están destruyendo el ecosistema humano que Russo conoce y quiere. Esa rabia queda en las vidas de quienes cargan con las consecuencias cuando una ciudad empieza a quedarse sin futuro.

Familia y ciudad terminan así pareciéndose mucho. Ambas arrastran antiguas averías que nadie sabe reparar del todo. Hasta el título acaba ensanchándose. El risk pool es, literalmente, la categoría aseguradora en la que terminan los conductores considerados de alto riesgo, y Sam tiene méritos de sobra para acabar allí. Pero a medida que avanza la novela, el verdadero grupo de alto riesgo parece mucho más amplio: esa familia, Mohawk y quizá todos esos personajes que continúan conduciendo con bastante poca visibilidad y unas cuantas averías pendientes.

La distancia desde la que Ned cuenta aquellos años tampoco le ha proporcionado una cómoda superioridad moral retrospectiva. Han pasado décadas y sigue habiendo zonas que no comprende, recuerdos cuyo significado cambia y comportamientos de Sam ante los que cualquier explicación resulta insuficiente. La novela recorre una enorme extensión de tiempo, pero siempre a través de esa mirada estrecha y personal: Ned puede contar lo ocurrido; entenderlo por completo es otra cosa. Y tal vez ahí esté una de las razones por las que Sam sigue ocupando tanto espacio incluso cuando el hijo ya es adulto.

También me interesa mucho la relación que la novela establece entre verdad y mentira. Ned aprende pronto que decir la verdad no siempre mejora las cosas y que algunas relaciones familiares se sostienen mediante pequeñas falsedades compartidas. Con su madre llega incluso a construir una especie de pacto tácito: él cuenta determinadas mentiras y ella decide creerlas. Lo curioso es que esa desconfianza hacia la verdad literal se prolonga fuera de la propia novela. Russo toma a su padre real, lo transforma en Sam, inventa una convivencia que nunca existió y utiliza esa mentira literaria para intentar llegar a algo verdadero sobre él. A veces la ficción sirve para eso: deformar los hechos hasta que empiezan a parecerse a la experiencia.

Russo escribe además con una sencillez bastante engañosa. Uno puede avanzar durante páginas entre conversaciones, trabajos, borracheras, encuentros casuales y pequeñas calamidades domésticas creyendo que apenas está sucediendo nada extraordinario. Luego mira hacia atrás y descubre que una vida entera ha ido tomando forma delante de él. Su habilidad consiste precisamente en saber dónde detenerse y, sobre todo, dónde marcharse de una escena. Algunas de las conversaciones más importantes de la novela terminan casi antes de que uno pueda prepararse para ellas. Así suele ocurrir fuera de los libros: nadie pone música cuando llega el momento decisivo.

Quizá por eso pensé varias veces en Anne Tyler y en Kent Haruf. Los tres comparten esa confianza en que una familia, una calle o una conversación aparentemente insignificante contienen material suficiente para explicar una vida. Russo es más desbordante y bastante más gamberro que Haruf; también más áspero que Tyler. Pero los tres saben algo que cada vez agradezco más como lector: las grandes catástrofes familiares casi nunca empiezan con una explosión. A veces basta con que alguien prometa venir y vuelva a no presentarse.

Eso sí: Russo se toma su tiempo. Mucho. Alto riesgo ronda las quinientas páginas, se permite digresiones, reincide en gestos y comportamientos y parece incapaz de dejar pasar a un secundario sin interesarse por su historia. Hay lectores a quienes esa reiteración puede desesperar, y entiendo perfectamente por qué. A mí me ocurre casi lo contrario: cuando entro en uno de estos pueblos de Russo no tengo ninguna prisa por encontrar la salida. El precio es una novela más expansiva y menos disciplinada de lo que podría haber sido; la recompensa es acabar con la sensación de conocer a gente que nunca ha existido.

Hay, sin embargo, una consecuencia de que Sam absorba tanta luz: Jenny, la madre, queda inevitablemente más en penumbra. Su fragilidad, su relación con Ned y la forma en que intenta sobrevivir con lo que tiene son esenciales para la historia, pero la novela concentra buena parte de su energía en Sam. Puede verse como un desequilibrio; a mí me parece sobre todo una consecuencia de la perspectiva de Ned y de la extraordinaria potencia narrativa de su padre.

Lo extraordinario de Sam Hall es que, después de todo eso, continúa siendo el corazón de la novela. O quizá por todo eso. Ned aprende de él algunas cosas que ningún padre debería enseñar y otras que difícilmente habría aprendido de alguien más sensato. Russo permite que ambas verdades permanezcan juntas. Hay personas cuya herencia consiste tanto en lo que nos dieron como en todo aquello que tuvimos que aprender porque ellas fueron incapaces de dárnoslo.

Terminé Alto riesgo pensando que quizá crecer sea también eso: dejar de preguntarse si nuestros padres estuvieron a la altura y empezar a comprender qué hacemos con lo que nos dejaron.

Sam Hall, desde luego, dejó bastante trabajo.

DC

[Samilja · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's true that for me a big part of this book's allure is how well I know these characters. I mean, really know them. But whether or not you relate to the characters from the start, by the end you will at least empathize with them. Russo draws each role so clearly with the requisite anecdotal background that brings them into focus. But his true talent is dialogue. Anyone who's spent time in back-woods, homegrown bars will have heard these conversations before - though perhaps not specifically or from the mouths of such eccentrics. For those who haven't, welcome to a new & true look at small town Americana.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant novel, the impact of which is only fully appreciated in the finishing of it. Part coming of age story, part meditation on familial ties and similarities between parents and children, and part documentary about the decay of a small New York town, Russo weaves these disparate threads into a unique tapestry showing the lives of quiet desperation lived by the inhabitants of Mohawk, NY. Ned Hall opens the novel by relating the tale of his parents' courtship and quick marriage just prior to his father, Sam, going to Europe to fight in WWII. His wife, Jenny, says that he was a changed man when he returned, but Ned wonders if that is true. If such questions interest you, you may find much to enjoy in this book.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always feel like kind of sucker for enjoying Richard Russo novels as much as I do--he plays the "looking back on your life, wistfully" card to the hilt--but whatever: the guy can tell a long, mostly uneventful story about vaguely interesting men with the best of them, and in Risk Pool, his second novel, from 1988, he again had me totally engaged, chuckling out loud, getting a bit teary-eyed, all of it. Risk Pool takes place in fictional Mohawk, New York, a dreary post-industrial town full of bitter drunken men and the women they abandon. But as in all of his novels, instead of sneering at these emotional/professional losers, Russo clearly, genuinely likes these people, and this town, and so imbues the story with enormous heart. Does the plot itself even matter? Not really: it's told by Ned Hall, and it's really just a look back on his entire life (maybe half the book is spent in his childhood and adolescence) from the vantage point of middle-age. Sure events occur, and Ned's father, Sam, a small-town rogue, is a terrific character, and you definitely want to know what happens to all of these people with whom you spend some 450 pages, but Risk Pool is really about feelings. And, I guess, I really like feeling things.

[Mike Gilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably my favorite Russo book. Granted, I have only read three, but between Empire Falls, That Old Cape Magic, and The Risk Pool, this one really stands out.

I live in upstate New York, quite a bit further west than the Mohawk Valley, but its close enough put pictures of Leroy or Olean in my mind when the once flourishing now dilapidated town is described. And although my life was nothing like that of Ned Hall's, I easily identified with the people in his life and the fears that he nurtured.

And you know what, by the end of the book, just like Ned, you come to love Sam. For all his faults he held down a job, and for the most part supported his son, giving him some important life lessons along the way. His strength of will was admirable, something that seems endemic in Sam's generation, diminished in the baby boomers, and faded in my generation and sorrowfully absent in the post-college crowd, today.

As he lies in a hospital at the end, unwilling to "trouble" his son with his maladies, you empathized with him and the cards that life dealt him during and after the war. Most frighteningly, there is that part of your mind that can imagine that if your cards turned up the same as his, that you too, could have easily ended up Sam Hall.

[Chris Gager · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took this with me to Mr. Russo's talk at the Bath Library last night. The talk was fun and interesting and I got his signature on the title page. Cool!

So, after two straight less-than-satisfying novel-reading experiences I needed to turn to an old reliable. RR is not exactly a friend, but I have actually spoken with him(see above). And .. I do like his writing - a lot. This is his second book - I think - and is very much based on his own life. His father, like the loser in the book was a ramblin' gamblin' man. The charismatic Sully in two later books is pretty much based on him too.

- we get a bit of the fishing thing from "The Sun Also Rises"

This book is definitely more about Dad than Mom. However, if you've read Russo's memoir "Elsewhere" you will readily recognize RR's troubled mother in this book. The father thing comes up in "Nobody's Fool"(doubled), "Empire Falls"(Paul Newman played 'em both movies!) and to a lesser degree in "Everybody's Fool" while the mom thing is there to a lesser degree in "Nobody's Fool" in the form of Sully's crazy ex-wife Vera. In "Nobody's Fool" Sully has three sons; his real adult son, that son's older son and his sort-of son Rub. Interesting to see how authors integrate their own life experiences into their writing.

Well into the book now and have raised my rating up to 4* as Russo got me to laugh AND cry last night. All that bar chatter is pretty cherce too. If you've read enough RR you can grasp the threads that run through "The Risk Pool," "Nobody's Fool," "Empire Falls" and "Bridge of Sighs," and which connect to the "real" world of RR's hometown of Gloversville, NY and to RR's growing up there under tumultuous family circumstances. That's what "Elsewhere"is about. All good stuff ... kind of related to Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose series, come to think of it.

Getting near the end of this deceptively long book - almost 500 pages. There were times last night when I wanted to give it a 5* rating, then a time later on when I felt like I was getting tired of all the stories. It DOES go on a bit. I guess RR had a lot of stuff he wanted to get out about his own youth. Natural, I suppose, that he would have had a high opinion of it's compelling-ness. Still, the continuous unfolding of this sympathetic look not only at the odd upbringing of Ned, but also the path through time of the town of Mohawk and it's many odd inhabitants may be the most "real" of Russo's books. Less fable, more history.

- more "you see"s crop up, particularly when Tria's mother is talking.

- In the Navy a duffel bag is called a sea bag. Other writers have made the same mistake.

- This should be a miniseries!

- The Sam-Ned relationship crops up again in "Nobody's Fool" with Sully and his son.

- Jerry-rigged vs Jury-rigged vs Jerry-built. Jerry-rigged is used by Russo but is actually sort of the bastard child of Jury-rigged(originally a nautical term meaning a temporary solution) and Jerry-built(meaning cheaply made).

Almost finished last night, but the clock said "go to bed" and I obeyed. Near the end we do get some middle class melodrama/novel-ey kind of stuff with the story of Drew. Oh well. Things are basically winding down as Ned sees the light at the end of the home town tunnel and realizes it's a slow-moving freight train.

- I think Balboa Island is a lot closer to L.A. than San Diego. Maybe RR was thinking of Coronado?

Finally finished by staying up a bit late. The book's down-winding was sort-of predictable and a bit of a letdown. Ned's post-Mohawk life, when he finally gets it going, was a bit boring. Ned himself was an opaque and withholding person. Aloof? Maybe that was part of RR's point. The outcome of a crazy-chaotic family life may well be a personality with an excess of detachment. The book was mostly about Mohawk and Sam Hall, not the narrator, even though the narrator was very much involved in the events. And yet, the character of the narrator was not impactful. Strange ...

- 4* for the portraits of Sam and Mohawk.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surprisingly charming eulogy to a complete douchebag. Covers Russo's usual themes and usual places, so a certain fandom helps.

[Preethi · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took a long time to finish this book. The literature is good, the book moves pretty fast, the characters are all well etched and lovable, but I still took almost a month to finish this book. May be it is because I didn't want to finish it, leave the town of Mohawk, Ned's side as he eats his sandwich at The Elms, or wanted some more of Wussy talking to Sam's kid. Or may be because I wasn't ready to let go of Sam Hall himself, yet.

What a beautiful book this is, and I realized it only as I wiped my tears towards the end.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think at this point, I need to take a serious break from Russo for a while. I still like his stuff (although the pagination on this one was annoying; my kindle had it pegged at 464 pages, but it turns out that didn't include the epilogue which was another 20ish pages), the tone, style and commentary are all up to snuff, but I am starting to get bogged down with the similarities. All of these novels essentially happen in the same town (Mohawk again for this one, but it is not significantly different from Empire Falls) in upstate NY; all the men are well-meaning drunks/deadbeats and all of the women are trying their best with what they've got.

The difference here was in part with the narration; instead of his more typical third person, Russo used first person for this novel. This is slightly surprising only in that the narrator's father, Sam, is arguably the main character. The novel runs from when Ned is a kid until the birth of his own son, but all of the important pieces of the book revolve around his relationship with his father Sam.

Given some recent discussions I've had about honesty (mostly spurred by my recent re-reading of Rand's Atlas Shrugged), I was especially aware of Russo's comments:
"Even as a child, I never had much use for conventional honesty." an "Rigid slavishness to the truth had never been one of my particular vices, and it as during this period that my mother's and my relationship was entirely re-written, grounded firmly in kind falsehoods. It would never change again. For the rest of our lives I would lie and she would believe me." and later "In spite of ourselves we'd had an honest moment or two, and they'd managed to spoil our former innocence. Often I'd catch her looking at me strangely, with equal shares disappointment and sympathy."

As always, Russo has great quips on people, relationships, and intentions. Some of my favorites are below:
"She either liked unfinished sentences or couldn't think of how to finish them, and I resented her unwillingness to spell out consequences. It was impossible to weigh alternatives without them."
"I ritually confessed that which I was not guilty of in order to make up for not confessing what I was guilty of"
"That's the way he'll tell it, even if she dies, I remember thinking. It will always be his story about how he hadn't believed it could be true, about how nobody who knew my mother could have believed it."
"I began to develop a firm conviction that most efforts to teach people things were wasted. All they needed was to go off some place quiet and read."
"things always worked better when my mother got her way...if you thought you were going to enjoy something else even more, you were wrong because she'd see to it that you didn't."
"Most people who stole weren't taking what they believed to be others' property. They were taking what they themselves deserved, all the things they'd been cheated out of."
"Things are always normal here, no matter how abnormal."
"people changed, with or without wars, and that we sometimes don't know people as well as we think we do, that the worse errors in judgment often result from imagining we understand what has escaped us entirely."

Overall, it was typical Russo. Easy to read, comfortable and quietly insightful. Nothing spectacular, but reliably decent.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dear Richard Russo,

I love character-driven stories, and you write some of the best I've ever read. Does anything much happen in your stories? Not usually, and what does happen tends toward the quotidian. But the way you portray these events, and their effects on your wonderful characters, makes me so pleased. Because don't we all have some little experiences, those ones that happen almost every day, that make us who we are?

Good work. I'm sadly almost done with your back catalog now, but I'm excited that you're still out there writing. With any luck, you'll be doing so for years to come.

Respectfully,

Nancy Williams

In the specific, I didn't like this one quite as much as Nobody's Fool or Empire Falls (which remains my favorite), but I liked it quite a lot. It could be a good place to start if you haven't read Russo, since I think there's a bit more plot to this one than some of his others.

[Diem Le · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the novel Goldfinch wishes it was.

Richard Rosso can turn a phrase like no other, and the section in which Ned lives with his father is perfection: funny, clever, witty, heartfelt...style AND substance, over and over and over again. This kind of writing is a true talent that is rarely found. So enjoyable that I tried to read through the section slowly in order to make it last. I would have given this book five stars (and I do not inflate grades!!), except the other sections are just not quite as good (though still very good!) and a bit slow. I suppose perfection is hard to sustain!! Still: loved loved loved.

[Bernice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would have been a whole lot better if it was edited properly particularly in the first half. There's a lot of scenes which felt repetitive. I'm glad i stuck it out though, the story improves a lot in the last half.

[Bill Krieger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! This review is a futile gesture. So, I'll lean on the default strategy of the writing-impaired: crappy stream of consciousness. (ha!)

QOTD

“Trouble with you is,” my father told her, “you think you got the pussy market cornered.”
- Risk Pool, Richard Russo

Richard Russo's writing style is Goldilock's porridge... just right. The small, everyday things that happen are interesting. The huge, crazy plot twists are believable. The writing is smart. It's funny. Russo's writing style is a joy to read. The description of Mohawk, NY and its denizens are wonderful!

Ned Hall is our first-person narrator. He is engaging and likable. The book has two distinct halves: Ned's childhood and then life as an adult. I was pretty pissed to leave young Ned behind at the halfway point, but I got over it. Ned's adult adventures are great, too.

Gender is, I don't know, exaggerated throughout the book. Ned's mother is over-protective and fragile. I don't think her name is ever given in the book, whatever that means. Ned's father, Sammy Hall, is super-macho and half-crazy, a “rockhead”. He is hard-drinking, irreverent, distant, unavailable, and a leader amongst the barflies in Mohawk. A crazy as Sammy Hall is, he is mostly self-destructive and comfortably falls into the category of being a “good guy”.

Risk Pool is mostly guy fiction. Ned's strained relationship with his father is something that really hit home with me. Sammy Hall's communication with his son is usually one word: “Well?” and is followed by a smack to the back of the head. To Ned, his father is both a superhero and a menace, and a person that he's desperately to connect with and understand. I'll go out on a limb and say this is a very common father-son arrangement. (cha!)

The four seasons in Mohawk are Fourth of July, Mohawk Fair, Eat the Bird (Thanksgiving), and Winter. Winter with a capital W. Ha!

QOTD

“Well” he said, squatting at the water's edge.

I shrugged. It was his favorite question, and I never knew what he meant by it.
- Ned and his father, Risk Pool

I have to queue up some more dang Richard Russo.
A great read!

[Christine Bonheure · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goed, maar te lang uitgesponnen en te gedetailleerd. Bepaalde passages vond ik vrij saai. Maar ja, ik lees gekochte boeken nu eenmaal altijd uit. Het gebeurt zelden dat ik een boek onuitgelezen weg leg, of het moet al heel slecht zijn. Bij het lezen schoot me dikwijls de uitdrukking van mijn neef door het hoofd: "De helaasheid der familiebanden" (mooi gevonden, vind ik). Met je familie moet je het inderdaad doen. En hoewel je je soms van je familie afwendt, de gelijkenissen en de invloed blijven aanwezig. Dat wordt des te duidelijker zodra je wat ouder wordt. Een mooi onderdeel van het boek vond ik het besef van de zoon, universitair geschoolde uitgever, dat hij enorm veel lijkt op zijn verzopen pa die gewoon doet waar hij zin in heeft, zonder zich iets te bekommeren om wat de omgeving van hem verlangt. Toch vond ik Russo's Empire Falls veel sterker, herinner ik me. Dat boek staat in mijn bib tussen de nooit weg te geven boeken. Schadevolle jaren daarentegen gaat naar het ruilboekenkastje.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book. Loved all of Russo's books and I loved this one too. Don't expect plot twists or surprises. That's not what you come looking for when you read Russo. What the man delivers are characters. Big ones. Big believable unpredictable characters who drive the novel forward by being themselves. To say nothing of Russo's writing which is so seamless and insightful, you almost forget you're reading. Russo never strays far from the settings and themes he feels most at home with - families, small town America, industrial decay - but the characters are rich and distinct enough to make you forget that you've heard all before.

[B the BookAddict · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love all things Russo and this novel is no exception. Interesting, a good longish book that kept me entertained and involved.

The story of a boy growing up and his relationship with his early absentee father and the sad life of his agoraphobic mother. As with most Russo novels, set in a NY state town which is dying, this is a struggling family, an only child set in 1950s/60s. Full of Russo's superb literary skills although not very much of his usual wry humor. Russo writes small town story extremely well. ★

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did a reread of this while recovering from surgery. You know that Russo is at his best when looking at father-son and male friendship relations. But through this go round, I was struck by not only the thin portrayal of the women in the book, but the presence of some unearned misogyny in there. First person narrators are allowed their prejudices, of course, but at some point, you want the novel's voice to give you a reason to understand the viewpoint. But one also must keep in mind that your critic was on painkillers throughout this entire second reading. He can't be trusted.

[Connie53 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit boek laat mij met een dubbel gevoel achter. Het is geweldig geschreven, maar het is eigenlijk een treurig onderwerp. Ned is de zoon van Same en Jenny. Als Sam terugkomt uit WOII laat hij zijn vrouw en jonge zoon alleen achter en gaat een leven vol gokken en alcohol leiden. Ned wordt opgevoed door zijn ietwat zenuwachtige moeder. Jenny wil het iedereen naar de zin maken, maar dan wel naar háár zin. Als Ned op een bepaald moment door zijn vader van school wordt gehaald, gaat hij mee op een vistochtje samen met een vriend van zijn vader Watje. 2 dagen later wordt hij weer thuis gebracht. Na verloop van tijd woont Ned zelfs 2 jaar bij zijn vader. En dan worden de verschillen tussen beide ouders duidelijk. Jenny is een overbezorgde betuttelende moeder en Sam is een vader die het met het vaderschap niet zo nauw neemt en zijn zoon vaak dagen voor zichzelf laat zorgen. Ook geeft dit boek een beklemmend inzicht in het leven van amerikanen op het platteland. De mannen brengen hun dagen en nachten door in diverse cafés en snackbars, de vrouwen schikken zich in hun lot en brengen slierten kinderen groot. We volgen Ned tot hij zelf vader wordt van een zoon als hij vierendertig is.

[Mitchell Waldman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Russo's second novel is a masterpiece of a coming of age story in a small town, detailing a young boy's dysfunctional family relationship, and foreshadowing his vivid rendering of small town life in upstate New York.

[Dylan Coggin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Possibly 4.5. I think it got a bit weak towards the end but the vast majority is amazing

[Anke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Niet uitgelezen. Het boek was te saai en erg langdradig.

[carolyn⭐️⭐️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haters thought i couldnt do it but i finished it i genuinely had multiple laughs reading this i love my slush book so lovely

[Gregg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russo’s bildungsroman, one of my favorite novels, takes a deep dive into a life and living I’ll never know otherwise. Mohawk, New York, where protagonist Ned Hall is eventually reacquainted with his alcoholic father Sam, is a tannery town hit hard by a withering economy and gloving industry that is all but extinct. The bars, the restaurants, the aging and decrepit streets are haunted by the working class, and Sam Hall is sort of their king. We see Ned reunited with his father after his mother has a breakdown, and through his eyes, we see the rhythms and cadence of small town life. Later, Ned connects with his father after his own fall on sort-of hard times as an adult, and then again their relationship evolves as Ned pursues a career and life elsewhere. But always the gin mills and pool halls of his native town bring him back, and us with him. And I have to say, foolish though this may sound, I found that town, with all its seediness, addictive.

The characters and the story wormed their way into my heart when I first read the book in a nine-hour sitting on my couch while in college, and I’ve been haunted by it ever since. Doubtless, Mohawk is signature Trump country and Russo pulls no punches in showing its ugly side, along with Sam Hall’s own trenchant racism and dubious morality. Nor does he seek to excuse such foibles and shortcomings. There is physical abuse, ignorance, brutality and every manner of banal, small town-type evil you can think of. But there is also something more, something enduring and even admirable, especially in Sam’s dogged pursuit of living, that never fails to strike me when I consider it.

Sam Hall is such a wonderfully drawn character. In real life, I don’t think I’d be able to stand him, but on the printed page, he’s a wonder. He’s a walking paradox, a man who disdains money yet seems to think subconsciously that some of those with it are to be honored; he’s brash and impulsive yet constantly likable; he’s prejudiced yet is best friends with a black man, “Wussy,” who seems to understand him better than he understands himself. He’s a lousy father, yet he and Ned have an unmistakable connection. Truth to tell, when you take Sam Hall out of Mohawk, you take away his power. But in Mohawk, he’s a sight to behold. I loved reading the scene where he walks up to Mrs. Petrie, who’s supposed to be catering a friend’s funeral and who Ned has encountered before, only to be greeted with a weary look. “Sam Hall,” she tells him. “I was just wondering how things could possibly get any worse.” How many of us have ever had a life like this, where we’re a fixture, someone who has to be known and acknowledged? Where we can step into a room and immediately be in sync with everyone in it, at a pace that suits us and us alone?

Halfway through the novel, Ned is returned to his mother, and Sam and Wussy return his pool table to him, a gift Sam finds for him after Ned takes up the pursuit over the summer. “We sure had fun though, didn’t we?” Sam says to him, cuffing him in the head. And Ned says yes, because it’s true, they did. It wouldn’t strike me until years later that those were my last words to my pet cat when we put him to sleep a mere fourteen months after I read the novel (with him sprawled atop me all the way). I didn’t even realize I was quoting that scene until just yesterday. That’s how Russo’s best work gets to you and lives inside you from then on.

[Craig Monson · Rating 4 out of 5]

If it wasn’t decades since I read him and if I’d read more, I’d be tempted to say there’s something of Mark Twain in Russo’s novel. It tells the story of a boy growing up in a northern New England town on the skids, which has lost its bank and its movie house (think “The Last Picture Show”). It is populated by deftly characterized deadbeats, misfits, those recently gone on (or off) the dole, many with more wit and resourcefulness than cash: nobody, in other words, who might stand much chance of benefiting from Congress’s latest tax plan. Except for one guy who had married into local money after WW II, but before too long expires on the golf course in a twosome with the pro’s fiancé—with his expensive golf slacks and underwear down somewhere around his knees. Russo fills the narrative with a string of such quirky, quietly (and wickedly) ironic, droll stories, as observed, overhead, and told by the observant, sometimes bemused, young hero, Ned (AKA “Sam’s kid”). Readers looking for a lot less talk and a lot more action will probably grow impatient: the story rambles on at something like the speed of a young boy’s growing up: slowly, with regular pauses for the next elaborate anecdote.

In the second half Sam’s kid has grown up, moved about as far away as possible, made something of a mess of his life, and begins periodically to go home again, taking up and forging the father-son relationship left stunted in childhood by Sam, the sort of man no mother would want her daughter to marry and the outstanding local character among many in the failing town. As Ned's life turns for the better, not much changes up north as the characters who populated Ned's youth age and fade away. There is something endearing about most of them, particularly the dangerously charming Sam, though perhaps one begins to tire of their unremitting good-ole-boy banter, misogyny, and misbehavior by the end.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I just found this story interesting -- and wondered how I could like someone who is a jerk (the father, Sam). But by the end of the story, I realized how deep this book is on so many levels. (1) I thought the story was going to be about Ned and his mother (she raised him for the most part). But it wasn't...it was more about Ned and his father, and what a profound impact his father had on Ned's life, even though he wasn't around most of the time. (Don't let the fact that the book was written around those few times that Sam was around fool you. He lived with his dad for two years and the other days he was around him, you could add up on two hands). And yet Sam was much more important to Ned than his mother. Because of gender? Because of genetic traits that made them 'simpatico'? This saddened me because I was under the illusion that being the custodial parent -- doing the hard job of raising the child -- would create a deeper relationship between that parent and the child. Is that usually the case and it's just because the mother in this story was so dysfunctional that it didn't work this way for Ned? (2) In the story, it was brought up numerous times that the characters would grow up to be just like their gender parent (girls like their mothers, boys like their fathers). Although it appeared Ned broke this -- because he was so aware of it? (3) and what about Drew? That could be a whole other discussion!

It wasn't a book that I couldn't put down (in fact, it took me a couple of months to read) so didn't get 5 stars, but it definitely made me think (which is why I gave it 4 stars). I'd love to hear what you think about this book!

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more books I read by Richard Russo the more I associate him with a fine, expensive wine. With a wine such as that, you don’t gulp it all down at one time. You take your time and savor it. Such is my experience with The Risk Pool. I think the biggest fascination I have with Mr. Russo’s books is that they don’t really have an apparent storyline but more of a history of his character’s lives. This particular book was no different. His characters are deep messes. The same person you sniff at during the beginning of the book, you will feel protective and maybe even some sympathy by the end of the book. I wanted to dislike Sam, the father, yet I found myself liking him more than Ned’s mother. About 100 pages left I had an uncomfortable feeling that I knew where the story was leading and it tugged at my heart quite a bit. That is what a good author does – makes you feel emotions for people that do not even exist. Richard Russo is a master storyteller. If you have never read one of his books, do not expect any of them to be a formula written storyline. You will have to invest time into the characters he writes. Yet I find myself days, even weeks, after reading his books thinking about the stories and his characters.