Bridge of Sighs: Oprah's Book Club - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Richard Russo (Paperback)

About the Book

A magnificent, big-hearted new novel and an astounding achievement ("The Boston Globe," this national bestseller is from the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Empire Falls."

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"A magnificent, bighearted new novel [and] an astounding achievement.... A masterpiece."
--The Boston Globe

"A story of constantly evolving complexity and depth.... [Bridge of Sighs is] Russo's most intricate, multifaceted novel ... enormous and enormously moving."
--The Washington Post Book World

"A novel of great warmth, charm and intimacy ... richly evocative and beautifully wrought."
--The New York Times

"[Russo's] most ambitious and best work."
--USA Today

About the Author

RICHARD RUSSO is the author of ten novels, most recently Somebody's Fool, Chances Are . . ., Everybody's Fool, and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody's Fool, won multiple awards for its screen adaptation, and in 2023 his novel Straight Man was adapted into the television series Lucky Hank. In 2017 he received France's Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Port­land, ME.