Elsewhere

by Richard Russo

After eight commanding works of fiction, the Pulitzer Prize winner now turns to memoir in a hilarious, moving, and always surprising account of his life, his parents, and the upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escape.

Anyone familiar with Richard Russo's acclaimed novels will recognize Gloversville once famous for producing that eponymous product and anything else made of leather. This is where the author grew up, the only son of an aspirant mother and a charming, feckless father who were born into this close-knit community. But by the time of his childhood in the 1950s, prosperity was inexorably being replaced by poverty and illness (often tannery-related), with everyone barely scraping by under a very low horizon.

A world elsewhere was the dream his mother instilled in Rick, and strived for herself, and their subsequent adventures and tribulations in achieving that goal—beautifully recounted here—were to prove lifelong, as would Gloversville's fearsome grasp on them both. Fraught with the timeless dynamic of going home again, encompassing hopes and fears and the relentless tides of familial and individual complications, this story is arresting, comic, heartbreaking, and truly beautiful, an immediate classic.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Biography Memoir, Audiobook, Book Club, Mental Illness

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2012

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

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is a must read for fans of Richard Russo. I have read all of his novels and his two story collections and I’m always moved by his keen observations of the human condition and his brilliant writing. Born and raised in Gloversville, NY, a small town in upstate NY, Russo tells of his early life there and gradually how that place and his family history shaped him as a writer, became the seed, the inspiration for all of the small towns that he writes about. In the beginning, he says that this is his mother’s story, but also his story. A good part of the narrative is focused on his mother, who raised him with the help of her parents, as his gambling father was not a part of his life until his late teens. He depicts a complicated, but loving relationship with his mother who suffered for most of her life from anxiety and panic attacks, her “nervous” condition that wasn’t more specifically diagnosed until much later in her life. It was a complicated, but loving relationship over the years and I felt her anxiety each and every time he moved his mother with his family on his nomadic academic career. It’s funny at times and poignant at other times and like the prose in his novels. Russo allows us to peer into personal life telling of his writing obsession and how he has created his own Gloversvilles in the small towns of his novels, places liked Empire Falls and Mohawk. I love how he took me full circle from his beginnings in Gloversville and ended the book with telling of his love - hate relationship with this town. In the end I came away with the respect and admiration for a writer whose books I already loved. I listened to the audio and it was wonderful to hear his story directly from him.

(An aside: while I was listening to this, my husband and I were driving to visit family and while on the NYS thruway we passed The Leatherstocking District area, where Gloversville is. A lovely coincidence.)

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Reminder to self: KISS – Keep It Short, Steve.]

Richard Russo is a great writer. His stories are fast-moving, his characters are recognizable, and his words entice without adornments. In fact, I like him so much I read this to become a completist. You might imagine that a memoir by a writer of his caliber would be a crowning achievement, and you’d be right for parts. But he chose a fairly narrow focus that in my mind weakened the whole. While I don’t doubt that his main subject – mother Jean – was a profound influence, I found myself wishing that the other drivers shaping him weren’t crowded out by her dominance.

Jean had a “nervous condition” that impacted young Rick more than anyone else. Rick’s dad, a gambler with little tolerance for the home situation, had run off early on. Jean, while supportive in a collusive sort of way, learned to manipulate her son well enough to pull his strings even into adulthood. Russo’s wife must have been a saint to put up with all the different do-overs they provided for Jean. Her condition, a severe inability to cope, was undiagnosed during her life, but was later discovered to have been OCD. It certainly gave young Rick a writer’s feel for emotional hardship and conflict. After reading this, I concluded that Russo comes by his empathy honestly. And he’s constitutionally incapable of a bad sentence, though he can write a redundant one. The number of times Jean would buck herself up saying, “I’ll just have to give myself a good talking to,” was well into double figures.

As big a fan as I am of Russo, I was hoping for more. There was so little of anything other than these difficult interactions that would count as character-shaping. An interesting exception was when he described his hometown in upstate New York. Gloversville, known in better days for its tannery and ladies’ gloves, was the kind of place he has written about so convincingly in Mohawk, The Risk Pool, and Nobody’s Fool among others.

Conclusion: great writing, limited purview, should have been Part 1 of a better rounded memoir.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is more "mom"-oir than memoir. You won't learn much about Rick Russo except as it relates to his mother's inescapable grip on him. Jean Russo was one doozy of a dippy demanding dame. She taught Rick to think of himself and his mother as essentially one person -- "You and me against the world." Even as an adult, he couldn't break free of her hold on him. For over 35 years he catered to her ridiculous demands, which cost him a fortune financially and mentally.

Ever since Rick was a boy, he'd been warned about Mom's "nervous condition." He lived in fear of upsetting her, and she played him like a squeezebox. She never mastered many coping skills, so she compensated by overdeveloping her manipulative muscles.

I couldn't decide which of them was more deserving of a good throttling. Mom was so demanding, and full of unreasonable complaints and expectations. Rick was far too accommodating and quick to back down, thus encouraging her absurd behavior. After she died, he figured out that her "nervous condition" was OCD, and late in the book he takes ownership of his role as her enabler.

Jean Russo didn't display the classic symptoms of OCD -- hand washing and the like. Her obsession was more expensive. She kept moving from city to city and state to state, essentially following Rick and his wife all over the country. Every time she decided to move again, it was up to Rick to find her an apartment she wouldn't bitch about, and then he'd pay all of her moving costs.

This wasn't really a four-star read for me. Jean Russo was just too annoying. The repetitiveness of her demands and complaints and all her moving around got old. I'm rating generously because of the impeccable writing, and because of Rick Russo's honesty and courage in telling this story. There's no sentimentality here, and he's always gentle in his portrayal of his mother, even at her exasperating worst. Late in the book you can see a clear therapeutic benefit for Russo in writing about his mother and himself.

If you've enjoyed Russo's novels, you'll discover here how he earned his impressive understanding of comic and tragic familial connections, and of the inner distress of conflicted characters. You'll also see how his hometown of Gloversville, New York served as the prototype for his fictional dying mill towns.
Rating = 3.5 stars

[Esil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to Richard Russo read his memoir Elsewhere. What a treat! This very personal portrait of his relationship with his troubled mother seemed to much more personal as told in his own voice. Rather than start by telling us that his mother had a mental illness, and that he had a hard go of it living with her, his story unfolds in real time as he describes the experience of living with his mother from his childhood through to his middle age years. (There is a particularly harrowing description of their move half way across the US.) He talks about her volatile moods, and his own internal tug of war over feelings of obligation, attachment and exasperation. Only at the end does he reflect on what it all means — what may have been ailing his mother, and its impact and legacy on him and his family. This memoir is beautiful and honest — Russo doesn’t paint himself as a martyr or as a hero. I love Russo’s novels, and I love than he was able to bring the same human focus on his own life as he does in his fiction.

The audio is definitely worth it.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

And so my major crush on Richard Russo continues. I'm not exactly sure why I like this guy's books so much. He's not a flashy writer, nor particularly chewy, and his novels, usually set in depressed rust-belt towns in upstate New York, don't exactly come at you with big new ideas about the human condition. And yet I've loved them all, for their heart, their generosity of spirit, and his talent for bringing people to life, whether in a few sentences or over the course of hundreds of pages. He also knows how to tell a story, how to pace the narrative, and because he treats his characters with so much respect, and clearly really likes these men and women, I guess I always feel like he likes ME, the reader, as well. Anyway, Elsewhere is Russo's memoir, told almost entirely within the context of his painful, infuriating, exhausting, and, of course, deeply loving, relationship with his mother, which sounds like it could be a tactical disaster, narrative-wise, and incredibly claustrophobic, especially considering how demanding, and frustrating, and, yes, completely fucking crazy his mother is, but it's not. Somehow Russo pulls it off. We begin in the small, depressed upstate New York town of Gloversville, once the "ladies glove" capital of the world, energized and flush with cash, though by the time Russo came along in the late 1950s things started changing fast, and for the worse, and it's been nothing but downhill since. A boarded-up downtown. Falling-down houses with residents on the brink of foreclosure (including Russo's relatives). Horrific, seasonal, low-paying jobs in road construction and tanneries. Hopelessness, drinking and abandonment. Russo's dad split when he was just a kid, popping in and out every few years, and so he, young Rick, became the entire focus of his mom's, the vivacious and lovely but terribly troubled Jean's, dreams and demands. Bad craziness, lasting decades and essentially taking Russo and his family hostage, especially his long-suffering and incredibly understanding wife Barbara, ensues. I kept asking myself how I would have handled such a needy, obsessive mother, who demands that every one of Russo life's decisions and changes include her, and often get sabotaged by her, and her demands, which increasingly lack any sort of sense. The answer: not nearly as well as he did. Russo fans should eat this up, as I did.

[☮Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Within these narratives, Russo provides clues as to which novel he was working on at each point of his life. He and his mother loved books, and the books moved when they moved. "It was from my mother that I learned reading is not a duty but a reward." She was his inspiration to become a writer, so gotta love her for that.

Narrated by the author, whose voice is edgy but very pleasant, I can't find any fault in it whatsoever. He seems like the kind of guy you could go have a beer and burger with, and he would regale you with funny, fascinating stories, among them what "an awful, awful place" Illinois is to live (quoting his mother).

This memoir is hilarious in a few places and also very touching. I continue to admire this man whose writing speaks to me.

[Darlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Nobody's Fool' written by Richard Russo is on the list of my favorite books and although I was aware that he based the towns and characters in his novels on his real-life hometown of Gloversville in upstate New York, I WAS curious about just what this memoir, 'Elsewhere' would add to what I already know. To my surprise, 'Elsewhere' didn't turn out to be a memoir after all.. at least, not in the traditional sense, not in the way I am used to. Instead, this book was about Richard Russo's mother, Jean. Having said that, I think it's important to add that because of the nature of their lives and their relationship, a book about JEAN Russo is by definition a book about Richard Russo. The two, for better or worse, were interconnected and their lives were intertwined in a big way until the end of Jean Russo's life.

I've read several reviews that were written of this book and the consensus seems to be that Jean Russo struggled with mental illness throughout her life… what was whispered about by family members as 'nerves'. Richard hypothesized that his mother had had OCD and bouts of anxiety. I certainly don't know what the truth is and I don't have the credentials to determine whether Jean Russo was indeed mentally ill. All I can say is that I could relate to Richard's plight in many ways. When Richard was a young boy, his parents split up and he and his mother returned to her hometown of Gloversville, New York… an old mill town in serious decline. The two lived in an upstairs apartment in his grandparents' house. Although his mother did not drive, she caught a ride each day to her job at the General Electric plant in Schenectady. What seemed most important to Jean was that she live independently and she wanted everyone she knew to know she was an independent woman…. often pointing this out during disagreements to her parents who were quite aware that the independence she referred to was not exactly true. Richard's father was largely absent from his life growing up… he chose to spend much of his time in gambling pursuits.

Throughout Richard's life, Jean Russo talked of little else but her desire to leave Gloversville. She seemed to feel that if she could just relocate ANY PLACE ELSE, she could have the life she felt she deserved. And throughout her life, whenever she became upset or anxious, she would declare to Richard.. "Don't I deserve a life?" In fact, that became a sort of mantra and it seemed to me that it became her way of controlling and perhaps manipulating her son to do as she wished.. to become an accomplice of sorts to her many whims. Eventually, Richard was grown and ready to go off to college. This too became Jean Russo's opportunity. Richard was preparing to leave for college in Arizona and he discovered that his mother was pulling up stakes and coming with him. She had simply quit her job at General Electric and although she vaguely mentioned a job at the General Electric plant in Arizona, it soon became clear that there in fact, WAS NO JOB. Her plans really went no further than to just escape her hometown. I was startled that this grown woman would undertake something so completely foolish, but it seemed her desperation to escape her life was greater than her common sense.

Sadly, the same scenario seemed to continue to play out in Jean and Richard Russo's lives for the next 35 years. Richard married, obtained a Ph.D, started writing and publishing stories and books, started a family … and through it all. his mother continued to move around the country with him and his new family…. from Arizona to Pennsylvania, to Illinois, to Maine and finally to Massachusetts. With each move, both Jean and Richard were a little older and each time Jean seemed less and less able to cope. This left Richard (and his extremely patient wife) to scout out a new apartment for Jean (which she NEVER liked), hire a professional cleaning crew to thoroughly clean the new apartment before she moved in (as the apartments were NEVER clean), pay the movers and make up the cost difference between what the rent ACTUALLY was each month and what Jean's rent subsidy would cover.

I have to admit that this book was awfully frustrating to read. I was constantly torn between feelings of annoyance with Jean and her demands AND Richard's inability to address the unreasonableness of these demands…. and compassion for what played out in both of their lives for such a long time. I suppose at this point I could say that Jean had serious problems she COULD NOT and WOULD NOT deal with and Richard DID seem to fill the role as her enabler. That is probably a true statement. But it also seems to me that I could say that Jean was a desperately unhappy woman for most of her life who seemed to suffer from the 'grass is always greener ELSEWHERE' syndrome. She believed that each new place would bring her happiness and the ability to FINALLY START her life… the life she kept reminding Richard that she deserved. The problem, it seems to me, was that she was so caught up in getting to the next destination that she became more and more isolated and failed to see and appreciate the goodness that she already possessed in her life.

I found this story to be incredibly sad. Whether Jean's inability to cope with her life is because of mental illness… well, I can't say. It certainly seems that might have been the case. As for Richard, it seemed to me that he is like many children faced with a desperately unhappy parent …. he absorbed her unhappiness and took on himself the responsibility of trying to make her happy. This most likely was not exactly great for his OWN mental health. But perhaps it's possible that his life with his mother and his memories of Gloversville provided him with the material he has used so creatively in the richness of the characters readers find within his novels.

[Erika · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do not waste your time reading this book.

I read it like the dutiful son Russo, the author, is: because it is his mother who constantly asks him to take her places ("my son will do that", she always insists at the sight of assisted-living and nursing home shuttle buses), he does it. Because the author is someone who is nice, I thought, I should finish reading this book.

But I didn't want to. It bugged me. Why would I want to read about a nagging old woman who insists on following her son across the country when he goes to college? I mean, that is just pure family dysfunction defined. Codependency, it's called.

One of Russo's mother's defining features, he comes to realize, is her reason for reading books: as an escape. It's not literature or metaphors she is after; she doesn't need to relate to characters. No, she wants to escape from her miserable life of insisting she is "independent" -- and, she sometimes is, at a certain extent; we must give her credit for that.

If you want to escape from your life, do not read this book, thinking it will be a nice memoir from a nice author. This book will pull you down, causing you to worry about your own mother and what you will do when she starts falling apart when she is older. Will you be your lap dog like Russo? Will you question yourself or wish you could have done things differently? Sure! But, who wants to READ about it? It's not a pretty picture; it's not tragic or beautiful; it's not even depressing or sad. It's just plain awful.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

So here's a memoir focused on a man's relationship with his mentally ill mother. You'd think it would be sad, depressing, frustrating. Not so. It's all about survival and resilience. True, some things don't get better: the author's hometown of Gloversville, NY, went downhill after the glove factories closed, much like my neighboring hometown of Amsterdam, NY, when the carpet mills moved out. Russo writes about the pollution and the disregard for workers' health, and the common identity and pride of place, lost when manufacturing left so many American towns in the mid-twentieth century. In that context, he gives us the story of his mother, Jean Russo, trying over and over again to reinvent her life. After her husband left, she was unable to break free of her parents and "live independently." It was a life's dream she was unable to realize without the constant help of the author.

When I wrote Off Kilter, my own memoir about growing up in Amsterdam with an unhappy mother, I tried to show her tenacity and resilience, too, and can only hope I did it half as well as Russo.

"What nourishes us in this life might be the very thing that steals that life away from us," he writes near the end, noting that his "paralyzing anxiety at the thought of returning home" is his mother's legacy. Gloversville is described so well in this memoir(and in his novels, by other names) it's hard to believe he wasn't there just the other day, and maybe that's because the place where we grew up remains a part of us always.

Written with a novelist's sensitivity to the story hidden in every life, "Elsewhere" is a beautiful testament to love, survival and putting one foot in front of the other, just to see what happens next. Russo's message: even if we can't, in his mother's words, make "it all work out," we keep trying. That's what it all comes down to, for all of us.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed with Richard Russo’s memoir Elsewhere but I had difficulty articulating precisely why until I read Jane McDonnell’s Living to Tell the Tale. I’ll quote the introductory paragraph to her book in its entirety because it is inspirational:

Writing is a second chance at life. Although we can never go back in time to change the past, we can re-experience, interpret and make peace with our past lives. When we write a personal narrative we find new meanings and, at the same time, we discover connections with our foremost selves. I think all writing constitutes an effort to establish our own meaningfulness, even in the midst of sadness and disappointment. In fact, writing sometimes seems to me to be the only way to give shape to life, to complete the process which is merely begun by living.

This is what is absent in Russo’s memoir. Instead Elsewhere is one more contribution to the genre of “crisis memoir”. Russo would be well-advised, as would we all, to reflect on the difference between honesty and confession as well as the difference between integrity and self-exposure. In McDonnell’s words, self-revelation without self-reflection is merely self-exposure. McDonnell also notes that a memoirist has no obligation to tell all when telling all is hurtful to others or one’s self.

Russo is only partially at fault. His generation of writers value showing above reflection and critical analysis. He wouldn’t want anyone to accuse him of aspiring to do more than entertain an audience. However, the best memoirs, as McDonnell reminds us, bear witness to the universal as privately experienced.

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've enjoyed Richard Russo's novels, some more than others, but reading his memoir didn't really anything new, anything I hadn't expected. I think some writers follow the adage to write about that which they know, and I think it might have been Richard Russo who gave that advice (only he's not nearly old enough). He's the kind of person I could see - providing you had more than a book buying relationship with - calling him up and saying "we're going to be in the area" and being invited to come on over and sit around his yard with a bucket filled with bottles of beer for the adults and sodas for the kids, maybe some burgers on the grill. Richard Russo personifies "home," and it doesn't really seem to matter where home is, New York is just another state (although I happen to be partial to it.)

That's what "Elsewhere" was like to me. A few visits through the years, maybe once or twice stopping by to visit his folks even though you knew he wasn't going to be there. Someone that's always a pleasure to hang out with no matter if something special is planned, or not.

So, here's my thank you note: Dear Richard Russo, Thank you for inviting me and mine over. I enjoyed spending time with your family, with everyone. You always make me laugh, and sometimes maybe shed a tear or two, but damn it was good to see you again. I hope the next time isn't such a long time away....

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been a fan of Richard Russo since the late 80s/early 90s, back when I was a teen and read The Risk Pool. I love his hardscrapple blue color characters and in reading this memoir it’s clear where much of his literary inspiration comes from.

This is mostly about his mother. She’s strong yet incredibly, frustratingly, annoyingly flawed. She had (undiagnosed) OCD but this is not really evident until the very end of the book after she’s already dead (no spoiler here, Russo’s an old guy himself) and the author looks back on many of the “quirks” that were sign of a bigger problem. I suspect he’s trying to have us match his realization, which was also at the end, still it felt like an after-the-fact kind of thing. Many of the (stellar) reviews mention his mother’s ailment and I thought many times while reading “I don’t see the OCD thing.” It wasn’t until she’s dead he basically lists everything that sort of diagnoses the problem, if you will. It made the whole thing read oddly.

And much of the book is like this. It’s on the shorter side, and goes through the years quickly. At one point Richard is a young boy and a few pages later he’s a successful author with teenage daughters. I realize it’s more about their relationship than a memoir of Russo himself but it’s weird when he adds, as yet another side note later in the book (when he’s in his 50s or 60s), that he, back in the day, ended up with a pretty fierce gambling problem like his almost entirely absent father. Wait a minute?! You brushed over that time in your life with “I got some graduate degrees and met my wife” and this gambling problem is a pretty big deal especially when this whole book is about parenting, heritage, etc. What does it further say about parent-child relationships that while protecting, caring for, revolving his entire world around his mother, Russo veered so close to becoming his father? Yet this was all dropped in at the end like an old guy might tell you “I had a cat once, in college.”

Russo’s wife, by the way, is a saint for putting up with the ultimate in mama’s boy relations. If you’re an eighteen you old and your mother quits her (very strong, very steady) job at GE to follow you to college and you don’t bat an eye, perhaps there’s still an umbilical cord involved. He does feel responsible for her for life, which is both sweet and messed up and not entirely his fault. It’s an interesting study in how a mother’s relationship with her child can subtly influence his or her life.

[Grandma Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Russo is one of my avorite authors. I've read all of his books and loved all of them. This book is no exception. He calls it a memoir but it's mostly a book about his mother, who was to put it mildly, a handful. She was never happy with any situation she was in. It's also about Gloversville NY where he grew up. It was a factory town tanning leather and making gloves and other leather products. And not the garden spot of New York state. It was a hard and dangerous work with more of the town dying from lung problems and cancer than statistically probable. She did have big dreams for her son and they did come true. I'm not sure if it was because of her or in spite of her. But together they made it work. I can see where he got material for most of his fiction and because he is such a good author he has made the interesting novels from a hard hard life. I highly recommend this book as well as his others. I don't think you'll be disappointed. And I also suggest he should be a candidate for sainthood for being such an understanding son and more than him his wife Barbara. I still don't understand how she put up with his mother for 35 years. She's a better woman than me.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tend to think Russo is an exceptional writer because of his character development (Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool are two of my favorite books).

Unfortunately when writing memoirs one doesn't have that same liberty with the subject matter. And since this memoir is almost exclusively about Russo's mother, to be honest I felt a little trapped. There just weren't many happy moments in her life. Maybe her arc is similar to the millions of divorced women in the 1950's. Trying to pursue a career in a mysognistic era was especially unkind and more so to those who have a mental illness. The other aspect is that there wasn't much dramatic tension in the memoir either. Russo's family environment wasn't the same kind of chaotic or crazy that you find in say a Jeanette Walls or Tara Westover memoir.

3.5 stars. Sobering but some definite insights as to where Russo got some of his character ideas.

[John Woltjer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good read. I have read "Straight Man" which was one of the few books I've ever read that made me laugh out loud. This memoir is a touching book about his very complicated relationship with his mother, who was rarely far from him geographically and never far away emotionally. There are huge gaps of time in this narrative, though there is a numbingly predictable dynamic to their relationship that would have made making the book more detailed, well, very numbing. The powerful revelation about the source of the dynamic comes towards the end of the book after she dies when he is confronted with the fact that his mother had a diagnosable, but treatable mental illness that he was simply too close to her to see. I very much appreciated the revelation that growing up in an objectively recognized, severely dysfunctional family situation can easily come to be seen as the norm because there is no "normal" to compare it to. The revelation hits Russo like a kick in the stomach, and only comes to him after a very early diagnosis of one of his young daughters, recently married, of the early stages of the illness that his mother lived a very long life with, virtually untreated. Whoever said that looking backwards one sees with 20/20 vision would certainly see that validated here.

Well worth reading!

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that whenever I become concerned about my parenting skills, I should remember this book. Richard Russo writes movingly, and often hilariously, about Gloversville, New York, the small upstate town where he was raised, his parents, and the incredible bond that existed between Russo and his mother. Noting that "a mother gives us breath, but she can also suck away the oxygen", Russo traces the path that his life followed since leaving Gloversville when he was 18 years old. And his mother was present in all of those moves and she usually lived just a short distance away. As a child, Russo was taught by his mother, a single parent, to fear her "nervous condition" as she called it and as she followed her son and his family all over the United States, she required Russo to cater to her whims and demands--as excessive and exasperating as they were. It wasn't until after his mother's death that Russo came to understand that she suffered from OCD and that he was the enabler in her life. A painful read with moments of laugh out loud mirth.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. What do you say about a book where on page 165 the narrator finally comes to the same conclusion that the reader has on page 20: "The biggest difference between my mother and me, I now saw clearly, had less to do with nature or nuture than with blind dumb luck" ?

I'm clearly missing whatever gene allows people to accept chatter about real estate as interesting and unfortunately it is the organizing principle here. But even so, Russo seems insensible to the advantages that "blind dumb luck" brought him compared to his mother's generation or any generation that followed his. (I'm trying now to thing of another memoir by an American male who graduated high school in 1967 that does not mention Vietnam -- someone help me out here).

This one belongs on the same low shelf as those other whiners for pay, Jeannette Walls and Augustin Burroughs -- which is too bad, because technically, he is a much better writer than those two.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book -- many reviewers did not like it because it dealt too much with his mother and felt he (Russo) catered too much to her throughout her life. The book was a memoir and his mother was a constant in his life since she was a single mom and had what would today be diagnosed as OCD, among other emotional disabilities.

I felt he (and his wife) were saints in his mother's life. They protected her and cared for her and never abandoned her. I somehow got the impression from reading other reviews that they should have kicked her out of a car along the side of the road somewhere and never looked back. How fortunate she was to have such a wonderful son and daughter-in-law, And, in spite of all her mental issues, she loved her son so very much.

It was a beautiful story in every way. I truly admire this author and his family.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclosure: I grew up in the city of Gloversville in upstate New York where Richard Russo–-six years my junior–-was born and raised and which plays a major role in this family memoir.

A number of my Gloversville friends who read Elsewhere expressed disappointment and even anger over Richard Russo’s treatment of the city of their youth in Elsewhere, his family memoir. Reflecting on the Prologue, which is a shorter version of a piece published by Granta, the British literary magazine in 2010, they feel Russo focused on the negative side of the glove industry and ignored the benefits which accrued to the community, such as inexpensive housing, better than decent schools, public parks and recreation, a high number of doctors per capita, et al––benefits some of which remain long after the glove industry’s near total demise.

While I’m in agreement that the glove industry balance sheet needs to consider the contributions it made to Gloversville as well as the negatives, I stand with Russo in stating that the cost was extremely high for those whose livelihood put them in harm’s way. Working in the glove industry––especially in the tanneries was extremely dangerous due to the use of toxic chemicals, but in addition to the healthcare issues, the exploitation of women who worked piece rate wages from their homes and the denigration of the skills of a generation of cutters who came over from Europe as described in Russo’s Granta article as well as in Herbert M. Engel’s study Shtetl in the Adirondacks (1991), the industry owners backed by the holders of political power in Fulton County used red-baiting and other vicious tactics to break the leather workers’ union locking them out of the shops in the winter of 1949-1950 and thereby reducing even further their economic straits. The cost of supporting one’s family by working in the glove industry increased dramatically after World War II, just as the industry was declining in the face of overseas competition.

All that said, however, the focus of Elsewhere is truly not on Gloversville. It’s a book about Russo’s relationship with his mother, who while she had a love-hate relationship with Gloversville, would have had the same feelings if she lived in Amsterdam, Troy, Elmira or any of the other cities in the heartland of America’s 19th century industrial revolution, cities which by the mid-twentieth century were in rapid decline, their industrial bases gone resulting in the disappearance of opportunities for non-college educated workers.

In her later years, Mrs. Russo often harked back to her job with the General Electric Company in Schenectady––to which she commuted from Gloversville. She often stated she wished she’d hadn’t left that job because of the status it imparted and the way that company treated their employees. To some extent she was deluding herself because employment at General Electric began to decline in the late 1960s as that company evolved away from production of turbines and other large industrial machinery to more technology driven fields such as medical research which means even had she stayed in Gloversville and not gone to Arizona with her son when he started college in 1967, she might have been let go as so many others were when GE closed buildings and offices in Schenectady.

Elsewhere is not an easy read, as it is a story that does not have a happy ending. Certainly for people in the mental health field, it must be agonizingly to read about the trauma inflicted by the deteriorating mental health of this woman on her son and his family. Truth be told it is likely that many families could share similar stories as recognition and treatment of the condition Mrs. Russo suffered was rare in those days and the kind of help she received¬¬––mainly medications that deadened her senses––only temporarily hid symptoms rather than addressed the underlying cause. Only when Russo learns that one of his daughters is afflicted with similar behavior does he learn that obsessive-compulsive disorder is a treatable condition.

One of the characteristics of Richard Russo’s novels that makes them so popular is the humane treatment of his characters. There are few if any truly evil people in his stories––nor are there paragons of perfection. Compassion doesn’t mean Russo ignores the seedier sides of life; it just means he shows us the heroic can exist in the midst of decline. In Elsewhere, he doesn’t blame Gloversville for his mother’s condition; it merely served as a convenient excuse when she lived there as a place that didn’t allow her to have a life.

For Gloversville, the battle continues. Heroic efforts have been put forth by some, resulting in good things in face of great obstacles. When you drive down Main Street in 2013 you will see a thriving food coop, for example, which offers healthy foods at reasonable prices. You’ll also see empty buildings and you may notice people who seem to have walked off the pages of Russo’s novels.

Let’s hope this city continues to inspire Russo to help us understand our neighbors and ourselves while its residents continue the good fight to restore the kind of community where each person has a chance to make the life they desire.

[Larraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost didn't read this book. In fact, I got it out of the library and had to return it unread because I ran out of time. However, I got it out again and read it in a short time, and I'm glad I did. Russo has always been one of my favorite writers. His prose is wonderful. I love his subject matter - especially his books that are based on his hometown in upstate New York. This one is incredibly heart-wrenching. Russo comes from a small town called Gloverville, a place that was once well known for its glove making and other leather goods. He describes this town so well that I could imagine myself walking down its main street. Russo was raised by his single mother who first separated from and then divorced his father who had a serious gambling problem. He and his mother lived on the 2nd floor of a two family house owned by her parents. She constantly complained about wanting to be independent, but she went back to her parents for help many times. As she grew older, she relied more and more heavily on Russo not just for financial help, but also for her emotional needs as well. Yet despite all that Russo's childhood was far from unhappy. Surrounded by cousins and cushioned by his grandparents, he had an almost "leave it to Beaver" childhood - assuming that the "Beave's" mother had mental and emotional problems. As I finished this book, I found myself getting tears in my eyes. I'm at the age where my mother is at a time in her life when every day is precious and her time is dwindling. Russo writes so beautifully about his issues with his mother - and also his immense love and affection for her as well.

[Brennan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really did not like this book at all. I thought I would love it - seeing that is a memoir of my favorite author. But Russo tells us very little about himself. Rather, the entire memoir is about his mother. Forgive me, but I really have no interest in reading about this woman's insecurities and co-dependence on every page. I wanted to know more about the man who wrote Straight Man and who crafted the brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls. But all you get on every page, is a lot of talk about his mother. It seems to me that Russo chould have written a more powerful memoir, but I guess since she dominated his life so much, that was his life. Even so, don't read this book, it is a sure miss.

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Boomer's generational angst

Like his novels, Richard Russo's memoir Elsewhere reads a lot like a Boomer's confused, angry dirge for an American life that that is no more. A life that really only existed, if it existed at all, for a brief shining moment wedged between the Great Depression, World War II, and the true onset of the post-war era and the economic shifts it brought.

From the first page, this memoir is filled with Russo's glum reminiscing for a prosperous, charming small-town middle-American life of the type seen only in Norman Rockwell paintings. He has a hazy child's recollection of “how good we had it back then,” and a vague, resentful sense that the prosperity and stability he was rightfully entitled to were stolen from him for reasons that are complex but definitely Someone Else's Fault. (Okay, that's not really fair because he got out and made a good living as a writer, so maybe it's outrage on behalf of the other residents of his hometown who didn't make it out, or the town itself and other small towns like it across America, that I'm sensing.)

Born in 1949, Russo and his fellow Boomers were an American generation raised from birth in a possibly unique moment of unbridled optimism, taught to assume that Things Can Only Get Better, and that if a White Male American graduated from high school, had a half-decent work ethic, and wasn't a drunk, he would definitely have a Good American Life with a steady well-paying job, a house, a pretty wife, 2.5 clean, well-behaved children, and a nice retirement pension.

They say pride goeth before a fall. That rug, always ephemeral and never as real as they were raised to believe, was pulled out from under Russo and his fellow small-town Boomers as they were coming of age between 1955 and 1970. The resulting pathos has the air of an enraged wounded animal, not understanding the source of its pain and lashing out at everything.

Gen-Xers and Millennials for the most part have little or no sympathy for this level of piteous wailing. We never believed in the American Dream to begin with. We were raised in the harsh realities of the post-war era, and a Boomer's dystopian future is simply our world. The idea of “job security” is laughable to Gen-Xers, and in the age of the gig economy and the side hustle, the very idea of a “full-time job with a living wage and benefits” is just as laughable to Millennials. The American Dream, as Boomers were raised to believe in it, is a bad joke to us. Many of us actively blame the Boomer generation as a whole for letting all this happen on their watch and then making us spend our lives in the resulting economic wasteland, so my ears are largely deaf to Russo's cries of self-pity.

After my initial annoyance with the opening chapters, I had to admit it starts out as a reasonably good story, and one that doesn't attempt to gloss over the hardships of a single working mother trying to both survive and raise a son in the 1950s. (And later, it doesn't gloss over the horrors of low-wage workers in the leather industry doing some of the worst, most dangerous jobs imaginable for crap pay.) It reminds me of The Glass Castle, although Russo's mother's psychological frailties weren't as obviously destructive to her son as those of Jeanette Walls' parents. However, as it goes on, it devolves into what just seems like endless harping about how annoying it was to spend his whole life trying to make his impossibly demanding and always miserable mother happy. By the time I was about 2/3 through, I was getting heartily tired of hearing Russo's endless bitching about his mother. But... just at the moment when I was the most tired of it, he had the biggest breakthrough of the book when he realized that in fact, he's just like her.

There's a point near the end where Russo describes, for no reason that I could at first discern, a horrific story he heard of what it was like to work at the worst jobs in the tannery in the New York town where he grew up. As he sat, wearing wingtip shoes and holding a flute of prosecco in an art gallery in London, he was almost dumbstruck with a form of imposter syndrome that I think I've often experienced, though I never explicitly recognized it in quite this way. Not imposter syndrome as we usually think of it, as in, “I'm not talented enough to be where I am in my career,” but more like:

“How did I cheat destiny and escape that life, that so many others did not?”
“What, if anything, have I done to deserve this comfortable, successful life?”
“What poor sod got stuck with the life I escaped?”

And that's really the heart of Elsewhere, and what in the end, made it a 3-star book for me rather than a 2-star book.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

When we love our authors, we want every book they write to be a winner (see my review of Mark Helprin's latest as a case in point...). I was very interested in reading Richard Russo's latest -- a memoir -- because I thought Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool and Straight Man (three of his) were terrific. Perhaps I'm not a memoir fan, but I was disappointed in this one. I did not think it was up to his fiction standard of quality. First, as I've written in other reviews, this book needed an editor with a stronger hand. I think with 100 pages fewer it would have had the same effect, told the same story, and been more effective. I was beginning to flag about half-way through, thinking when will this end. Not what you want to be thinking when you read a book by a longtime favorite author. The story is compelling as Mr. Russo details his relationship with his mother. It is really her story, and he is generous and sensitive in how he relates what is essentially a sad remembrance. If you haven't read any of Mr. Russo's books, I would recommend Straight Man and then the other two mentioned above. If you are truly a fan of memoir, I would say give this one a try, but then go on to read Russo's fiction.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only regret about reading this book is that I didn't dive in sooner. I had read only one other Russo book and found it depressing. I imagined a memoir focused on his mother's death would be über depressing. But I couldn't escape review after review praising it. So I gave in and got it on tape. Read by Russo, this book is anything but depressing. It's sad sometimes, sure, and occasionally it's frustrating, but mostly, it's engaging. Russo pities his mother and the residents of his down-and-out hometown, but never himself. He manages to tell his story with enough detachment to give himself credibility and enough emotion to make him relatable. In telling the story of his and his mother's intertwined lives, Russo shows rather than tells us what life was like in a small, struggling town with a larger-than-life, struggling Mom. His story takes us across the country and back, always focusing tightly on his topic. By the end, I too forgave her erratic behavior and overbearing neediness. I think we all fear the legacy we'll leave our children, who know our every flaw and suffer for our every weakness. Would that we were all lucky enough to receive the grace delivered so eloquently by Russo.

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Billed as a memoir, this volume felt more like a 'study' ... of R. Russo's mother, an extremely difficult but strong personality who held pride of place in his life, apparently relegating his wife and children somewhat to the background. I was very much hoping it would be a memoir reflecting on growing up in an upstate new year small town, much like the settings of his excellent novels, so was disappointed. I give the author all credit for spending the majority of his life beholden to this OCD parent (and even more to his wife in putting up with it), but didn't enjoy sharing in his memories. I look forward, nonetheless, to his next novel.

[Cathryn Conroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is for two audiences:
1. Richard Russo fans. If you have read at least one or two of his books, you will recognize the source of some of the characters, places, and storylines. Plus, it's by Richard Russo. Need I say more?

2. Anyone who has had a mother totally dependent on him or her—that is, dependence so all-encompassing that it significantly impacts your own life choices because you must (always) think of Mom first.

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this soul-baring memoir by one of America's best novelists is a fascinating peek into the very personal lives of one man and his mother and the small town in which they lived. Richard's mom, Jean Russo, was divorced when her son was a little boy at time when marriages—even bad ones—were held sacrosanct. (His father was an alcoholic who spent his time and money gambling, and after the divorce rarely contributed money to Richard's care.) The pair lived in a duplex with her parents in Gloversville, New York, a slowly dying factory town. Jean was fiercely independent, confident, and self-reliant, except that was mostly a show. Deep down she was terrified because she and Richard lived so close to the edge financially that one misstep or unexpected expense could spell catastrophe. But there was one other big problem: Jean was mentally ill, even though everyone then just called it "nerves." By the time Richard was 18, he was pretty much responsible for his domineering, controlling, and passive-aggressive mom in a way that most of us could never fathom.

Told with surprising honesty and a raw intimacy that occasionally brought tears to my eyes, this is a book that was, no doubt, cathartic for Russo to write and reassuring for many readers who may have endured a similar life.

[Aaron Nix · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a section where Russo dissects his mother’s personality based purely on what books she reads and it was so enthralling I kinda wish the entire book was him walking into strangers living rooms and writing mini biographies based only on what he observes. Also a good reality show idea

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

American novelist Richard Russo’s first work of nonfiction is a perceptive psychological reflection on his relationship with his mother. As a single mother in the 1950s, Jean Russo proudly fought to maintain the appearance of independence, when in fact she was utterly reliant on others. With only a modest income and no driver’s license, she depended on cheap lodging with her parents and lifts from relatives, and her tendency for nervous attacks made even everyday tasks a struggle. All along she dreamt that she and Richard might one day escape from Gloversville, the blue-collar town in upstate New York’s leather-working region that inspired so much of Russo’s fiction.

Russo is careful to give a fair picture of his mother’s troubled life. For every revelation of her neuroses, there is a defence of the strong love that held mother and son together. He describes them as “locked in a two-person drama,” a sort of comedy of errors that culminates in a disastrous road trip to Arizona, as Jean accompanies Richard out west to college. Russo’s other preoccupation is with the meaning of home: a place to escape from but ultimately return to; though perhaps, as the old adage goes, you can’t truly go home again. His guilt at escaping from his ancestors’ legacy of unpleasant menial labor, as well as his guilt at wanting his own life separate from his mother’s, make for an engrossing read.

Though suffering from an obscure title (the U.S. title, Elsewhere, is better but still not very evocative), On Helwig Street is an excellent addition to a burgeoning genre of memoirs dwelling on the complexities of the mother-child bond (other examples include Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? and Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?). There is a fine line between mothering and smothering, a distinction Russo explores masterfully in this enjoyable and thoughtful book.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rated this book 3 stars as an average of the writing (4 stars) and the content (2 stars).

I read and agree with many many of the comments on this page. The work reflects Russo's wonderful writing style which I've enjoyed in so many of his books. But 35 years of a difficult mother weighed me down. Maybe it was cathartic for the writer, but it's hard on the reader. The book did succeed with making me very grateful that mental illness doesn't run in my family, and that I have siblings to help share any load.

I also agreed with those who commented that this isn't really a memoir, but he admits that he called it that because he didn't know what else to call it. My beef with the "memoir" tag is that the book is not about his life, it's about his mother's life. And that's not the same thing.

[Camie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir of Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author
of Empire Falls and eight other books, is a bittersweet account of his life growing up in upstate New York , in a town supported and then devastated by the shut down of its leather glove making industry. Perfectly titled Elsewhere, it is the story of the seemingly overwhelming life long bond between he and his eccentric single mother who spends most of her anxiety ridden life trying to both escape from and then return to, their small hometown in search of a better life for both her and her son. "Recounted with a clear eyed mix of regret, nostalgia, and love, Elsewhere is a comic and heartbreaking tribute to the tenacious grip of the past." 4 stars