Bridge of Sighs

Richard Russo's novel Bridge of Sighs is an exploration of various characters from a fictional small-town in upstate New York who are reunited after many years in Venice to write their town's history. Based on the author's own experiences growing up in the factory town of Gloversville, NY, Russo explores the lasting impact of growing up in small-town America on even the most ambitious residents.

The setting of Russo's book is integral to understanding the themes of the novel. The book takes place in fictional Thomaston, NY, a city built around a local tannery, which has kept the town afloat since its founding. It is a dingy city, with a polluted river from decades of industrial waste. The city itself is split into sections – the West End is the dirty, dangerous side of town, the East End for businessmen and the upwardly mobile. The Borough, where main character Lou C. Lynch lives with his wife Sarah, is also the home of the tannery's owner. The town has the social and economic feel of many small New England cities, where the possibilities for a given individual are limited, and success comes from following a set of particular social, economic, and geographic rules.

Bridge of Sighs begins with three main characters, all around 60 years old. Lou Lynch, nicknamed Lucy, stayed in Thomaston after high school to marry his high school sweetheart, Sarah Berg. The pair eked out a living for themselves running convenience stores, and now are embarking upon a trip to Venice, where they will meet long-time friend Bobby Marconi. Bobby is a troubling character for both Lucy and Sarah – in high school, Sarah was a little in love with Bobby Marconi, despite her relationship with Lucy. And Lucy, in his own way, was in love with Bobby, though more as an idol and a friend. Bobby left town at a young age to live in Italy, and the trio fell out of touch.
 
Through this lens, Russo then moves into the focus of the book, which is the adolescence of each of the book's three main characters. This is done through Lucy's memoirs, which offer one of many alternative perspectives throughout the novel, which frequently shifts viewpoints. Lucy begins by telling his story, growing up with two parents who are opposites of one another and learning a sense of humor from his sarcastic Uncle Declan. His family members argue incessantly about the proper way to run a convenience store, and Lucy grows up with a stilted view of his own potential. He is also haunted by a traumatic incident at the Thomaston train tracks, which shape his view of the world.
 
Sarah and Bobby Marconi have their own histories as well. As a child, Sarah navigated life with an eccentric and snooty high school teacher, whose head is full of big ideas but who has a faulty view of the real world. Sarah's mother was a runaway, disinterested in her daughter's upbringing. Bobby, on the other hand, comes from a bitter and angry family, one with a life-long vendetta against the Lynches. Bobby leaves town as soon as he can to distance himself from his family, and reinvents himself as a famous artist in Venice, using the name Robert Noonan. But despite fleeing from his past, neither Bobby nor the Lynches can escape the impact that Thomaston left on their lives.
 
Russo became famous with his novel Empire Falls for his quirky, anecdotal style of writing about small-town life, and he continues this style in Bridge of Sighs. Much of the book consists of funny details and brief stories about the interactions between these characters and their bizarre families, and as a whole this creates a story that crosses the triumphs and traumas of multiple generations living in this poor, industrial community. Russo's writing is character focused, and his novels are often the stories of many lives, and how they wind together in tight-knit communities. The effect is one of both humor and serious contemplation about the nature of life in towns unknown to most of the nation.
 
Richard Russo is a novelist and screenwriter. Much of his work is semi-autobiographical, and based on his experience growing up in upstate New York, and subsequent years he spent as a teacher at Colby College. Russo received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2002 for his book Empire Falls. HBO adapted the novel, and Russo helped write the screenplay for the teleseries. Russo also wrote a memoir, entitled Elsewhere, that tells the real story of the experiences that shaped his novels.