Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs is a sprawling, warm
blanket of a book that, like Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire
Falls, explores small town values and small town ugliness, the myth
of upward mobility, and the importance of carving out a friendly corner
of the world.
Russo’s primary narrator and our (occasionally unreliable) guide
through the paths of memory and memoir is Lou “Lucy” Lynch, a man who
has lived his entire life in Thomaston, New York, “a place you’ve never
heard of, unless you’re a history buff, an art lover, or a cancer
researcher.” Lou is about to embark on a trip to Italy with his wife,
Sarah, and the idea of leaving the country for the first time has
prompted a desire to write his “story,” to relive his childhood in
Thomaston, his relationship with his parents—especially his
beloved father, and his teenaged friendship with a boy named Bobby
Marconi, now a famous painter living in Europe. Lou’s story, of course,
is also the story of Thomaston, and in typical Russo fashion, it’s the
type of big novel that you live inside while you’re reading it,
inhabiting it like a physical space, coming to care about its
characters just as much as Russo does.
Bridge of Sighs is not as funny as Empire Falls, and
Lou’s narration is as sentimental as the character himself,
particularly when he talks about the convenience store that his father
purchased and that Lou still owns. Russo wisely doesn’t limit the
narrative voice to Lou’s, though, and some of the best passages of the
novel come from the perspective of Sarah or Bobby, both of whom offer
the reader insights into the difference between how Lou perceives
himself, and how others—others who care about him—perceive
him.
The remarkable thing about this novel is that while we don’t always
trust Lou to tell us the truth—and he doesn’t—we also
forgive him his omissions. Russo is a compassionate writer who refuses
to condemn humans for their weaknesses: Each of his characters is drawn
with a commitment to revealing the passions and disappointments that
shape even the most unlikeable personality. And even if, as Lucy’s
mother insists, people never change, Russo proves here that our
understanding of them can.