 First edition cover with quote by John Irving | |
| Author | Richard Russo |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Vintage Books |
Publication date | 1986 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 418 pp |
| ISBN | 0-394-74409-8 |
| OCLC | 46946938 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3568.U812 M6 2001 |
Mohawk (1986) is the debut novel by American author Richard Russo.
The book is set in Mohawk, an upstate New York mill town in a decline following that of its leather tanning industry. The Mohawk Grill, a diner run by Harry Saunders, is featured. The novel explores the lives of two intersecting families, the Grouses and the Gaffneys.
Anne Grouse is the 40-year-old daughter of Mather Grouse and his wife, and lives with her parents and son Randall after her divorce from Dallas Younger, her high-school sweetheart. He is a good-hearted but unreliable auto-mechanic. Anne is in love with Dan, the husband of her cousin Diana. He became paralyzed after a car accident.
The relationship between Mather and fellow leather-worker Rory Gaffney provides tension and suspense in the story.
Randall befriends Rory's mentally disabled son Bill, who is in love with Anne Grouse. Following his grandfather Mather's death, Randall returns to Mohawk, after having dropped out of college to avoid the draft. He meets Rory's granddaughter B.G., who falls in love with him. The story climaxes with Randall being accused of murder after three Gaffneys lie dead.
Greg Johnson in The New York Times writes,
"Despite its byzantine plot, the novel delineates good and evil along simplistic lines. . . . There's an attractive, small-town coziness to much of the story, though . . . The writing, moreover, is brisk, colorful and often witty. These qualities and the impressive scope of the novel bode well for Richard Russo's future, but the initially strong sympathy he evokes for his characters is gradually lost in the complex windings of plot and structure." [1]
Kirkus reviews said, "Workmanlike writing for lovers of the well-atmosphered small-town saga with not a cliche unturned. For those idle hours between daytime soaps." [2]
Mary Elizabeth Braddon was an English popular novelist of the Victorian era. She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret, which has also been dramatised and filmed several times.
Richard Walden Yates was an American fiction writer identified with the mid-century "Age of Anxiety". His first novel, Revolutionary Road, was a finalist for the 1962 National Book Award, while his first short story collection, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, brought comparisons to James Joyce. Critical acclaim for his writing, however, was not reflected in commercial success during his lifetime.
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020.
Richard Russo is an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher. In 2002, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel Empire Falls. Several of his works have been adapted into television series and movies.
Pete Dexter is an American novelist. He won the U.S. National Book Award in 1988 for his novel Paris Trout.
Anne Mather is the pseudonym used by Mildred Grieveson, a popular British author of over 160 romance novels. She also signed novels as Caroline Fleming and Cardine Fleming.
The Risk Pool is a 1988 novel by American author Richard Russo. It is a Bildungsroman or "coming of age" novel set in fictional Mohawk, New York, a dying blue-collar town. The Risk Pool was well received by critics, such as The New York Times, which called it a "superbly original, maliciously funny book" and praised Russo's "brilliant, deadpan writing." In 2004, Warner Bros. Pictures was reported to be developing a movie based on the book, with Tom Hanks starring as Ned Hall's father and Lawrence Kasdan writing the script and directing.
Empire Falls is a 2001 novel written by Richard Russo. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2002, and follows the story of Miles Roby in a fictional, small blue-collar town in Maine and the people, places, and the past surrounding him, as manager of the Empire Grill diner. Critics roundly praised Russo's novel, especially his development of characters. The book was adapted into a miniseries for HBO in 2005.
Linda Randall Wisdom is an American author of contemporary romance novels.
Anne Rice was an American author of gothic fiction, erotic literature, and bible fiction. She is best known for writing The Vampire Chronicles. She later adapted the first novel of the series into a commercially successful eponymous film, Interview with the Vampire (1994).
Last Ditch is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the twenty-ninth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1977. The plot concerns drug smuggling in the Channel Islands, and features Alleyn's son, Ricky, in a central role.
John Williams was a New England Puritan minister who was the noted pastor of Deerfield from 1688 to his death. He and most of his family were taken captive in the Raid on Deerfield in 1704 during Queen Anne's War. He was held by the French in Montreal for more than two years, who wanted a high-ranking French pirate in exchange. After being released in late 1706, Williams became even more notable for The Redeemed Captive (1707), his account of his captivity. It became a well-known work in the genre of captivity narratives.
Stephanie Doyon is an American novelist best known for her novel, The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole. The novel was published in 2005 by Simon & Schuster.
The Words is a 2012 American mystery romantic drama film, written and directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal in their directorial debut. It stars Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde, Jeremy Irons, Ben Barnes, Dennis Quaid, and Nora Arnezeder. Cooper, a childhood friend of Klugman and Sternthal from Philadelphia, was also the executive producer.
The Nice and the Good is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1968, it was her eleventh novel. The Nice and the Good was shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize.
The Baby-Sitters Club is a series of novels, written by Ann M. Martin and published by Scholastic between 1986 and 2000, that sold 180 million copies. Martin wrote an estimated 60-80 novels in the series while subsequent titles were written by ghostwriters, such as Peter Lerangis. The Baby-Sitters Club is about a group of friends living in the fictional, suburban town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut who run a local babysitting service called "The Baby-Sitters Club". The original four members were Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier (secretary), Claudia Kishi (vice-president), and Stacey McGill (treasurer), but the number of members varies throughout the series. The novels are told in first-person narrative and deal with issues such as illness, moving, and divorce.
The Whore's Child and Other Stories is a collection of seven short stories by American author Richard Russo, published in 2002 by Alfred A. Knopf. It was published after Russo received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls hence gained considerable attention and many, mostly favorable reviews.
Tessa Jane Hadley is a British author, who writes novels, short stories and nonfiction. Her writing is realistic and often focuses on family relationships. Her novels have twice reached the longlists of the Orange Prize and the Wales Book of the Year, and in 2016, she won the Hawthornden Prize, as well as one of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes for fiction. The Windham-Campbell judges describe her as "one of English's finest contemporary writers" and state that her writing "brilliantly illuminates ordinary lives with extraordinary prose that is superbly controlled, psychologically acute, and subtly powerful." As of 2016, she is professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.
Nobody's Fool is a novel by American author Richard Russo that was published by Vintage Books in 1993. The plot revolves around small-town life in the fictional town of North Bath in Upstate New York. Themes covered in the book include responsibility, forgiveness, and community. The book received favorable reviews, and it was adapted into a 1994 movie, also called Nobody’s Fool, starring Paul Newman. Russo has written two sequels to the novel: Everybody's Fool (2016) and Somebody's Fool (2023).
Chances Are... is a mystery novel by American author Richard Russo. Initially published in 2019, it was his first standalone novel in a decade. The title is taken from a 1950's hit single by Johnny Mathis.
 | This article about a 1980s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |