Bridge of Sighs: Oprah's Book Club (Vintage Contemporaries)

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls comes “a magnificent, bighearted” novel (The Boston Globe) about small-town America that follows Louis Charles Lynch (“Lucy”) and his wife of forty years as they prepare to embark on a vacation to Italy.
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor
Louis Charles Lynch is sixty years old and has spent his entire life in Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for forty of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, “Lucy” is an optimist, though he’s had plenty of reasons not to be—chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an “empire” of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation.
Lucy and Sarah are also preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy, where his oldest friend, a renowned painter, has exiled himself. Once a rival for Sarah’s affection, Noonan leads a life in Venice far removed from Thomaston. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the “history” he’s writing of his hometown and family. And with his story interspersed with that of Noonan, the native son who’d fled so long ago, the destinies building up around both of them (and Sarah, too) are relentless, constantly surprising, and utterly revealing.
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor
Louis Charles Lynch is sixty years old and has spent his entire life in Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for forty of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, “Lucy” is an optimist, though he’s had plenty of reasons not to be—chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an “empire” of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation.
Lucy and Sarah are also preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy, where his oldest friend, a renowned painter, has exiled himself. Once a rival for Sarah’s affection, Noonan leads a life in Venice far removed from Thomaston. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the “history” he’s writing of his hometown and family. And with his story interspersed with that of Noonan, the native son who’d fled so long ago, the destinies building up around both of them (and Sarah, too) are relentless, constantly surprising, and utterly revealing.
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Community Reviews
This book took awhile for me to get into but as always Russo delivers a great novel full of flawed characters. I didn't find it as humorous as some of his other novels but it was thought provoking at points. Loved the paragraph on how young people think there are all these choices in life.
Great read. Massive scope though. Perhaps to much scope. I think he hit the key areas in a striking manner. It turned out to be quite amazing to uncover plots and character growth while struggling with large issues such as the human perspective on life. How should you view situations. And this goes beyond the cup half full or empty, it bleeds right into the realist and deceptive methods humans attempt to cope with. If it weren't just So broad in it's attempt to detail humans.and there lives.
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