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 enlarge | Author: Richard Russo
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy Used: $2.88
You Save: $24.07 (89%)
New (39) Used (88) Collectible (22) from $2.88
Avg. Customer Rating:  130 reviews
Sales Rank: 45753
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.8
ISBN: 0375414959
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375414954
ASIN: 0375414959
Publication Date: September 25, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Nice, clean - SHIPS SAME DAY
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| Customer Reviews:
 Long but interesting October 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is long but good reading. In places it brings to one's mind Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks". But it lacks Mann's tightness of narration.The tone is also not uniform. It has searing passages followed by blase description.Some episodes seem unnecessarily incorporated. But the characterization of the protoganists, Lou, Tessa, Lou-lou, Sarah and Bobby is admirable. It brings them before your eyes as living people. Sarah falling in love with two persons at the same time but choosing certainty of consistent love over possible passion should be a lesson to all boys and girls. It was a pleasure reading it.
Rich and velvety September 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You can complain all you want but this was a strikingly rich and smooth dessert of a read. I loved it until the end which I felt was just a bit forced: almost as if Mr. Russo plunged into the hat of improbable endings and out popped "adopts an underprivileged teenage girl." Oh well, it didn't really matter; the journey was wonderful. Russo's description of small-town upstate New York life is absolutely masterful - and his characters also totally pitch perfect. Another one, please!
 A Long Train of a Story September 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having enjoyed Russo's novel, Empire Falls, I decided to read deeper into his list by picking up The Bridge of Sighs. The book is one long train running. Like a train, it takes a while to get up to speed. Also like a train, it has many compartments. It starts with a first-person narrative as one of the main characters (a man who has had the nickname "Lucy" since first grade) writes a memoir mixed with a town history. The story than skips to his boyhood friend ("Noonan"), who left town at the end of high school and has never returned. This sets up the central framework of the book.
Through the course of the narrative, the reader meets most everyone in the small town of Thomastown, New York. Lucy and his relationships reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly of life in a one-company town. His naive father, his prescient mother, his rascally uncle, are the early people in his life. However, as he grows up he exists in a decaying place. Ultimately, he and Noonan part a couple of times, the second time for good when Noonan has to escape the law.
Like Empire Falls, this Russo book pries into the deepest recesses of people's lives. He changes perspective in order to reveal different points of view of the same incident. This is where the story can be very powerful. However, at times the repetition grows tedious. Either way, Russo will take you on a long ride that can be insightful and enjoyable.
Bridge of Sights September 17, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
BRIDGE OF SIGHTS by Richard Russo
Review by Carlo Gabbi Author of `An Amazing Story'
A Complete disappointment.
I bought Mr. Russo's book, The Bridge of Sights, knowing that Mr. Russo won a Pulitzer Prize with Empire Falls. I had the impression that this novel, The Bridge of Sights, had something to do with people living in Venice, and I wanted to read this book because this city is particularly dear to me with many happy memories from the past.
I found Mr. Russo a talented skilled writer and I wish to have his capacities in writing. Unfortunately in this novel he is well below any expectation.
`Bridge of Sights' is disappointing and extremely too long. Only the last fifty pages are conclusive, while the rest of the narrative is wasted into unnecessary and a too long descriptions of life in a country town and its inhabitants. Most likely I missed out what Mr. Russo was trying to present in this particular country life.
I found the narrative lacks of action, and for this reason, for too many times I jumped to the end of the chapter and not even the few events in Venice were able to raise emotions of pleasure in me.
In fact I only partially read this long non convincing story, which is going on for five hundred pages under a beautiful title, The Bridge of Sights, but in a not convincing way.
I give Mr. Russo five stars for his writing skill, but only two stars for don't be able to deliver to the readers the expected trilling emotions.
Carlo Gabbi Author of `An Amazing Story'
 brilliant writing September 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I tire of hearing "this is a page turner" because usually I discover that I can actually put the page-turner books down for a few minutes. Well, that has not been true for Bridge of Sighs. I have read hundreds of novels, and this is the one I would most want with me were I washed up by a hurricane--likely here in Miami Beach--onto some piece of lonely island. This is truly brilliant writing with some of the most delicious characters I have ever met. The journey toward so many is so well worth it. I an English teacher, now teaching college writing. So I was somewhat interested in getting to meet Mr. Berg, a man who is alluded to occasionally during the first three hundred-plus pages (yes, this is a long novel). He is writing a novel (I have done that). But what I met and what I expected to meet was such a surprise. My stomach hurt when I entered his classroom--Honors English--with the cast of characters I had come to know and love, Lou (Lucy), Sarah (Mr. Berg's daughter), Perry, Three Mock, and Noonan among others. Oh, my, I have been outrageous I suspect in the classroom. But Berg way out does me.
The novel is set in a real town on Long Island (the name is anyway), but transported to up-state New York. It is a story of complex people who live both simple and complex lives. And I did not want once to put this novel down.
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