Straight Man is truly one of my all-time favorite novels. So, when I discovered that Russo had penned another novel set in a small town in central New York, I simply had to purchase it right away.

Finally, I managed to carve out some free time for reading in my schedule - what a delightful experience it was! Given that I reside right next to "Mohawk, New York," the very town where the novel is set, I felt an even stronger connection to the characters as the names of all the surrounding areas of my life kept popping up (even though there isn't an actual Mohawk County).

Russo has an incredible talent for depicting deep and sensitive characters and plot events with a lighthearted touch. It is sheer enjoyment to read, and at the same time, it offers valuable vicarious life experiences. I just have to say that I adore Mather Grouse, and how could anyone even bear the obnoxious sisters Milly and Mrs. Grouse - yet you end up loving them anyway! I recognized all the insufferable flaws of half a dozen people in my own life in these characters, but their Mohawkian fictional counterparts are still endearing. So, at this point, I feel that I can face, for example, my ex (another Dallas Younger), with a bit more tolerance.

Mather Grouse really hits the nail on the head when he tells his daughter that "People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake. They can devote their whole lives to it." Adelle has tried to convey the same to me, but Mather seemed more believable, I guess. I have this quote written on an index card and I carelessly threw it into my disorganized desk so that I can find it when fate permits.

This has reminded me of why I have such a passion for reading, and it has inspired me to read "She's Come Undone" once again - I'm longing for a female character that I can truly identify with. I've been reading far too many stories with male protagonists lately.

Enjoy! I highly recommend this book, especially to locals!

Richard Russo, born in 1949 in upstate New York, is truly one of America's most prominent living novelists. After his debut novel, Mohawk, he has gone on to pen seven other remarkable novels, including The Risk Pool, Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool, and Straight Man.

His novels offer a compelling portrait of small town USA. Set in a small town in New York in 1970, the story weaves together the lives of seven main characters, of different ages and genders. However, the essence of the story could easily apply to any year from 1915 to 2015 and any of the fifty states. There is an undeniable sameness in what it means to grow up, live, and perhaps grow old and die in a small town. Here are some snapshots from the novel that anyone who has lived in a small town can easily recognize:

Mrs. Grouse and her thirty-five-year-old daughter, Anne, find old Mather Grouse collapsed on the living room floor. Mrs. Grouse wants nothing but to call an ambulance, but Anne defies her mother and manages to get her father breathing, saving his life. One of Anne's friends, Dan, tells her, “You’re old enough to know better than to disobey your mother. Just who did you think you were, saving your old man’s life after you’d been expressly forbidden to?”

Randall, who is extremely intelligent and learns rapidly, finds himself in a new situation when he comes to the small town of Mohawk. At his previous private school, his qualities were appreciated. But at Mohawk High School, everyone snickers and sneers. He quickly realizes what he has to do to be accepted by his classmates: occasionally act dumb. As Richard Russo writes: “Perfection rankled just about everyone, including the teachers, whereas mediocrity made people feel comfortable.”

At the very center of small town USA is the high school football team. Old Mather Grouse, who has been suffering from serious health issues related to his lungs and breathing, listens to his wife's tuneless humming. When he knows she is at the other end of the house, he removes a loose board above the cellar window and takes out a plastic bag with some Camels and matches. He then puts on his windbreaker and goes for a solitary walk, which is the highlight of his day.

Henry, the owner of the Mohawk Grill on Main Street, befriends Wild Bill Gaffney, who always enters the grill through the back door in the alley. Although Richard Russo doesn't use the traditional term, it is clear that Wild Bill is what is commonly known as the village idiot. And, predictably, he becomes a key player in the unfolding drama for the novel's central characters.

The holidays can be the gloomiest times in a small town, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is a telling scene on Thanksgiving Day when we read: “Then Dallas borrowed fifty from Harry and joined the poker game upstairs. The other players were family men who’s seen enough of their families and grown depressed by the sight of the turkey carcass.” Ah, when all else fails, there is always the reliable second-floor hideout where you can drink whiskey and engage in some illegal gambling.

One of the most heart-wrenching parts of the novel is when old Mather Grouse reflects on the future of his bright, beautiful daughter. He wonders: “What if, despite her great gifts, she also ended up trapped? Would she pity some poor boy and marry him, set up house in some rundown second floor flat to wait patiently for him to come home from the corner bar, their meager meal sitting idly on the back burner? In another year would she be pregnant beneath her flowing graduation robes?” I'm sure this reflection has been repeated countless times by small town fathers and mothers as they think about the future of their sons and daughters, especially if those sons and daughters have the potential that could be quickly snuffed out if they never leave their small town.

Here are two of my favorite quotes about small towns:

“In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“People fear anyone who differs from what is considered normal, and in a small town the idea of normal can be as narrow as the streets.” -- Elizabeth Chandler

Lastly, here is a micro fiction of mine published years ago:

SMALL TOWN MENTALITY
From watching their Fourth of July parade and going to their county fair you wouldn’t ever guess this small town is home to such sordid, twisted, sadistic minds.

A few outsiders think it starts when kids bob for apples. The adults hold their heads underwater until their little fingers turn blue and clutch at the air.

Although, some say it begins at home, at night, behind closed doors, when every light in town is required to be put out.

American author Richard Russo

This is the second book by Richard Russo that I have read.

Apparently, this is his first book. I'm truly glad that I read The Risk Pool first.

Because if I had read Mohawk first, there's a possibility that I may not have read The Risk Pool.

Mohawk is indeed well written. It introduces characters who also appear in The Risk Pool.

However, this story is not nearly as engaging or smoothly executed as The Risk Pool.

I have several other books by Mr. Russo in my to-read stack.

And I do look forward to reading them.

But unfortunately, this one was not a favorite of mine.

It has its own merits, but it just didn't capture my attention and interest to the same extent as The Risk Pool did.

Perhaps it's because of the differences in the storylines or the way the characters were developed.

Nonetheless, I still appreciate Richard Russo's writing style and look forward to exploring more of his works in the future.

Part 1: 4.5 stars

Part 2: 1.5 stars


I have read all but one of Russo's novels. I still need to read Nobody's Fool. This particular novel is my second least favorite. When I began reading it, I actually thought, "Wait a second, have I read this already?" The reason being that it has a very similar feel to The Risk Pool and Empire Falls. However, it is not as good.

The cast of characters in this novel is way too large. The second half is overly plot-driven. In the first half, I fell in love with a few really well-developed characters such as Dallas, Anne, and Harry. But in the second half, I barely got to know them better. This is because I was too distracted trying to keep up with all the other characters and trying to keep track of what becomes a really convoluted plot.

If you are a Russo junkie like I am, I guess it's worth reading. But if you are choosing a Russo novel and don't care which one, I would recommend reading The Risk Pool instead of this one. It has a very similar vibe but is heads and shoulders above this novel.

Bereits 1986 im Original erschienen, nun im Dumont Verlag auf Deutsch erhältlich, der Debüt-Roman des Pulitzer Preisträgers Richard Russo, "Mohawk", ist ein faszinierendes Werk.

Wie in all seinen Romanen schildert Russo hier auch den amerikanischen Provinz-Alltag in seiner ganzen Trostlosigkeit. "Mohawk" spielt in den späten 60ern, und das Leben ist für jeden Einwohner der Stadt Mohawk ein fortwährender Kampf. Es handelt sich im Grunde um einen Roman über unglückliche Menschen, über ungelebte Träume und den alltäglichen Kampf ums Überleben.

Russos Protagonisten in "Mohawk" leben ein trostloses Leben ohne Hoffnung und ohne Aussicht, dieser Tristesse zu entkommen. Die vielen kleinen Geschichten um den Niedergang dieser Stadt, um ungeliebte Lieben und ungelebte Leben, lassen schon viel erahnen von den späteren grossen und kraftvollen Werken wie etwa "Diese gottverdammten Träume", "Diese alte Sehnsucht", "Ein grundzufriedener Mann" oder "Ein Mann der Tat". Obwohl "Mohawk" noch nicht die ganz grosse Klasse der nachfolgenden Romane hat, ist es dennoch ein typisches Erstlingswerk mit vielen tollen Ansätzen und daher lesenswert.

The author's debut novel is truly a remarkable piece of work. It is an engaging and often humorous novel that is set in Mohawk, an upstate New York mill town that is in a state of decline.

The novel features two families, namely the Grouses and the Gaffneys. Mather Grouse and Rory Gaffney have been long-time enemies, adding an interesting layer of conflict to the story.

The plot has excellent momentum, leading up to an eventful ending that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

For readers who are new to Richard Russo, it is highly recommended that they first read 'Empire Falls' or 'Nobody's Fool'. On the other hand, Russo fans are sure to find this book a satisfying reading experience.

This book was first published in 1986, and it has since gained a significant following among readers who appreciate well-written and engaging novels.

Overall, the author's debut novel is a must-read for anyone who enjoys a good story set in a unique and interesting location.

Richard Russo's books often follow a familiar pattern.

There is a decaying upstate New York town, which seems to have the gravitational pull of a black hole, sucking in all the hopes and dreams, causing them to die.

The cast of characters typically includes a good guy, a bad guy, and of course, the utterly feckless but probably good guy. There are also strong women who endure through it all.

Despite the somewhat predictable nature, Russo does it all wonderfully. His writing is compassionate and moving throughout.

"Mohawk" is darker than most of his books, but it is just as enjoyable and touching as all the others.

It delves deeper into the lives and struggles of the characters, painting a vivid and sometimes painful picture of life in this small, dying town.

Yet, through it all, there is a glimmer of hope and a sense of humanity that shines through, making it a truly remarkable read.

A review for Katelyn.

I absolutely adored this book. It's truly remarkable how Russo has the ability to take a small town in America, filled with seemingly ordinary people going about their daily lives, and transform it into something truly beautiful. As I reached approximately three-fourths of the way through, I began to question whether anything significant was going to occur or if the book was simply a detailed portrait of the place and its inhabitants. In all honesty, I would have been perfectly content if that were the case because it was executed so masterfully. However, then the story picked up pace, and it became incredibly exciting to read all the way to the end. I can't help but wonder how much someone who hasn't lived in a small town or couldn't identify with so many of the characters based on their past experiences would appreciate this book. Hopefully, they would still be able to find value in it, but for me, I firmly believe that my own experiences in a small town and the ability to relate to the characters played a significant role in why this book resonated so deeply with me.

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. --- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Richard Russo has long been one of my favorite contemporary novelists. However, I somehow missed reading his first novel, Mohawk. Mohawk is a small, decaying mill-town in upstate New York that has seen better days. Its citizens, too, seem to have fallen on hard times. This is essentially the story of two families, the Grouse family and the Gaffney family, and how their lives have intertwined over the years, sometimes in a dramatic way. Set in 1970, with Vietnam and the draft in full swing, this is a tightly plotted and compelling portrayal of small town life in the United States. There is also the realization that the town has been poisoned for years. A long-awaited, federally funded study links the high incidence of cancer and leukemia in Mohawk County to the toxic waste and chemicals dumped into the nearby Mohawk River by local leather tanneries and mills.

All in all, this is one of the darkest novels I have read by Richard Russo. It once again confirmed why I prefer life in the big city. Although Russo has long been praised as an author with an uncanny ability to reflect the rhythms of small town life and its people. "And what Dallas knew all about was Mohawk, 'a backcountry prophet too unselfconscious to guess his words and attitudes were a ringing indictment of his world.'"

I admit up front that I truly enjoy Richard Russo's writing. In this novel published in 1986, his first in a career that would lead him to a Pulitzer Prize, readers can already experience his remarkable skills at telling a good story and his ability to create realistic and empathetic characters. This novel, set in a small New England town, begins in 1967 and ends about six years later.

The town of Mohawk had once thrived with tanning and leather industries as the main source of employment. However, as manufacturing declined, so did the town. The industries that had been polluting the town for years by dumping their effluent into the rivers closed, and Mohawk became a place people wanted to leave rather than stay and raise their families. Nevertheless, most never left, knowing there wasn't much for them elsewhere.

With this small town as the backdrop, Russo focuses on two families, the Grouses and the Gaffneys.

Mather Grouse is a quiet, introspective, and principled man who has worked hard all his life and quietly provided for his family. He, his wife, and their daughter Anne live a modest life. Although Mather never had high aspirations himself, he quietly hopes for more for his daughter, who is both beautiful and intelligent. He wants to see her leave this dying backwater of a town and make a better life for herself elsewhere. Anne respects her father, listens to him, is influenced by his thinking, and plans to leave Mohawk and go to college. But as the years pass, Mather's hope that Anne will leave Mohawk fades when he realizes she is in love with Don Wood, who will become her cousin Diana's husband.

Anne has a different relationship with her mother, a controlling woman who rules her home and rarely ventures out except to go to church on Sundays or to visit her sister Milly. Mother and daughter are frequently at odds with one another, and Anne learned long ago that the best way to have peace at home is to ignore her mother's nagging and let her have her way. Her father copes in his own way, allowing himself to be badgered by his wife but always letting her know when he's had enough. Once he signals that time has come, she knows to stop.

Mather is now on the downside of his life, suffering from emphysema after years of smoking, his one great enjoyment in life. He has great difficulty breathing and spends most of his day in his recliner in the living room, reading the paper, watching TV, and snoozing. He sneaks cigarettes whenever he can manage it and usually gets in about four a day when he dodges his wife's watchful eyes. The forbidden cigarettes are now his only act of rebellion against a world that he feels may not have always treated him fairly.

Anne married Dallas Younger, the local football hero who had a car and was the envy of every girl in high school. Together they had a son, Randall. But it wasn't long before Dallas, who worked as an auto mechanic at the local garage, was shirking his duties as husband and father and became an irresponsible, hard-drinking but charming cad. The marriage died after three years, the couple divorced, and Anne and her son returned to her family home.

Dallas now careens around town, often in some process of recovery from a previous night of drinking. He is always losing his laundry at the laundromat and is often seen wearing poorly fitting shirts with someone else's name embroidered on the pocket, having picked up their clothes and left his own behind. He also has a bad habit of misplacing his false teeth, a problem he learned to deal with by having several replacements on hand. But his worst hours are spent when he is drunk and becomes sentimental and maudlin, ruminating over his past failures. He rarely saw his son Randall. The two are awkward in each other's company and it is always a struggle to find something to talk about. Dallas lost his brother David to cancer a few years ago and is still grieving that loss. His love for his brother is his only real anchor in a life that has simply gone off the rails.

Meanwhile, Anne's cousin Diana married Dan Wood, but their marriage remained childless. Dan did well in his career, and the couple bought a house with a pool on the nicer side of town. Diana's mother, Millie, Mrs. Grouse's sister, is an overbearing hypochondriac who lives with them and has become a significant drain on their finances, especially after Dan ended up in a wheelchair when he was struck by a car.

Anne and Diana are not only relatives but friends. They had often double-dated in their teens, and their friendship carried on into adulthood. For years, they have met to vent over their aging, whining, manipulative mothers who try to rule their lives and insist on having everything their own way.

The Gaffneys were a very different family. Rory Gaffney has a brother, Walt, a police officer in town, and once worked with Mather in the tannery. He also has a retarded son, Bill, who is about thirty and is known as "Wild Bill." Rumor has it that Billy was once a normal child, but something happened long ago, no one is quite sure what, and he cannot speak properly. He spends his time wandering the town, is bullied by the children, and tolerated by the adults, although everyone tries to avoid him.

For years, Rory stole leather from the mill where he and Mather worked as cutters. When Mather was promoted to foreman, Rory approached him to join in the scheme, but Mather refused to cooperate and returned to his former job as a cutter. The disagreement led to a quiet but longstanding feud between the two men, and they became unspoken enemies.

The Mohawk Grill is the traditional gathering spot in town. Harry Saunders, who is almost fifty, runs and owns it. He serves coffee, meals, and provides the newspaper that serves as the basis of the town gossip. It also provides a place for Untemeyer, the local bookie, to gather and record his bets. Harry feeds Wild Bill his breakfast every morning before his regulars arrive and tries to protect him against the harsh words sometimes thrown at him by the townsfolk. Harry tolerates Bill although he finds him a burden and doesn't like him around when he has paying customers. He feels badly for Bill as his family has pretty much abandoned him and he is now essentially a hobo.

The grill is the place where the men in town gather and give each other the companionship they need in a town that is quietly dying, its energy sapped gradually by its inhabitants bored with their daily routines. Apart from coffee, meals, and access to the bookie, the Grill provides a quick entrance to the ongoing poker games up the back stairs.

As time rolls on in this small town, and people, slowly drained of their hopes and dreams, are lulled into passive lives filled with routines, a number of events will rattle the quiet, and each of the characters' lives will take a different turn.

Russo has captured what some refer to as a "sense of place" in his depiction of Mohawk and small-town life. The fading town becomes a character on its own, with its backlit streets and its genteel houses that have gradually lost their elegance as expensive repairs were put off for lack of ready cash. It is a place where everybody knows everybody else. A town in which dignity has been replaced with desperation, filled with working-class men who have no work and few options if they move elsewhere; a town now paying the price for its former success. The good-paying jobs are gone, replaced with a depressed economy and people dying from the cancers caused by the pollutants the industries dumped in its rivers. People carry on and get through life, bored and not sure what to do with themselves. Poker games, betting the horses, and visiting the strip club help fill the void. The emergency room at the local hospital becomes the gathering spot after the bars close at night and the fighting starts. Men line up with an assortment of black eyes, cuts, and bruises, and women hobble in with help from a neighbor after the violence that erupted when their husbands came home. The old hospital, in the process of being torn down since the new one was built, also serves as an important symbol of a town and its people caught in the maelstrom of change. Through scenes like these, Russo has beautifully captured a town in decline, filled with melancholy people resigned to accept their fate. He captures the dynamics of small-town life and helps readers understand these people who stay in a town that is dying. And they do so because it is home.

But not all the characters or connections between them are well described. The two whining mothers, the proud older generation who never wander much from their homes, are always exceedingly polite but quietly criticize everything and everyone who does not meet their standard of dress or behavior. They appear as stereotypes, caricatures of controlling mothers and demanding mothers-in-law. Russo chooses not to delve into the relationship between Anne and her son Randall, leaving it for readers to imagine. Rory Gaffney sometimes feels like a typical villain, and Diana, Anne's cousin, is a character never fully realized. But everyone else comes alive as people readers can see in their minds' eye and believe in, which is critical as the story evolves from these characters as secrets are revealed, events from the past are revisited, and plans are made for the future.

I agree that some unlikely coincidences help propel the plot, but I found it an excellent read, one I highly recommend.

My sixth Russo. Mohawk was his first novel, published in 1986. The story takes us back to the era of the Vietnam War and the draft. With two murders and a suicide, it stands as perhaps his darkest work.

Like most of Russo’s novels, we are presented with a dying small town in the northeast, predominantly on the wrong side of the tracks. The inhabitants we encounter are seriously flawed individuals, blue- and pink-collar workers eking out a living on the economic margin. There is also an environmental theme of cancers caused by factory pollution, in this case, from leather tanneries. I think I like Russo in part because he writes about the kind of places I’ve spent most of my life in – New Bedford and Fall River, Mass., and Zanesville, Ohio. Russo himself grew up in a town like this, Johnstown, NY, and lives part of the year in another, Waterville, Maine.

His novels also explore the themes of movers and stayers. There are those who are content to remain in town (or are trapped there) and those who can’t wait to escape. There are also parents who desire their kids to leave town: Don’t marry your high school sweetheart; Go away to college; Leave. In this case, unlike in his books Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs, it’s a father who wants his bright, beautiful daughter to seek greener pastures. I’ve repeated a section about movers and stayers that I included in my reviews of other Russo books below.

Our characters include two female cousins who married two brothers. Unfortunately, one woman marries the wrong man – she’s been in love with her cousin’s husband her entire life. We have a diner operator and a nasty cop with a love-hate relationship with his older brother. There’s a woman who can’t connect with her mother, father, or son throughout her life. There’s a piston-head, a bookie, and guys who steal from the leather factory. There’s also a severely handicapped man who is essentially the ‘village idiot,’ and a mystery surrounding how he was born normal but ended up that way.

Russo writes with both sympathy and wit for these characters.

Some passages I liked: “If unfortunates like Billy Gaffney were summarily institutionalized, she told her father, than half of Mohawk County will end up behind bars. Father agreed, having always believed that half of Mohawk County belonged behind bars.” “Harry Saunders looks around Mohawk Grill and considers that life has changed, an idea that occurred to him only recently and has given him little comfort. Indeed he has always embraced the opposite philosophy, or rather, it had embraced him.” “On the Sabbath, Dallas’s two-room apartment, small and cramped and none too clean, always seemed to him small and cramped and none too clean.” “She wasn’t much of a talker anyway, or even a listener. Maybe that was why Randall enjoyed talking to her. She seldom responded to anything he said; and if she had any reaction at all, it was frequently puzzlement, as if she hadn’t any idea where such odd notions came from.” “People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake. They can devote their whole lives to it.”

A local man gets interviewed on TV stations and is offered a lucrative contract with an Albany advertising firm to promote a new line of hunting-ware. He hadn’t hunted once in his life, but according to the agency, his carriage and rugged face ‘reeked’ of the woods they’d never been in either.

It’s a good read, and I enjoyed the story, although I still prefer Empire Falls the best, which won the 2002 Pulitzer.

Here’s the stuff about movers and stayers from my Empire Falls review: To me, a major theme of this book is what it would be like to have stayed in your hometown. As a geographer, I enjoy reading and thinking about this theme. There are Movers and Stayers, and even research studies about how these folks are different – we all know both types. A recent Pew Research study found that “movers” tend to be college educated. They move for jobs and, once they move out of their hometown, are likely to move again in search of better employment and greener pastures. The “stayers,” about 37% of American adults who still live in or around the town they were born in, stay for family ties. The Midwest has the highest proportion of stayers; the West the least; East and South are in the middle.

Photos from top: Johnstown, NY from johnstown.ny.gov; Waterville, ME from thomasstorage.blob; Zanesville, OH from wikipedia; The author, from wikipedia.

[Edited 8/27/23]

During this pandemic of 2020, my husband and I made a decision to have read-aloud sessions. We would pick authors or books that we might not otherwise read on our own. It turns out that my husband has the most pleasing voice, which means I don't have to do any work.

Anyway, this has been one of our choices. Some years ago, we saw the movie version of Russo's Empire Falls and liked the story. So, we decided on this first novel of his. I took a look at the review in Kirkus because their reviews are often very entertaining and sometimes border on being unkind in their comments.

In my opinion, their review was spot-on, if not a little harsh. I read it and knew that I couldn't have done better. But despite that, I still enjoyed the book. And, remember, it was his first novel.

Here is the link to the review: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re... It's interesting to see what others think about the books we read.