"I’m a big Russo fan anyway, but this goes to the top of my favorites list. His first stand-alone novel in a decade is an engrossing story about friendship and the ways that the past affects us all our lives. The story of three college friends from the sixties, who meet now on Martha’s Vineyard for a weekend reunion, Chances Are… gives us all the things we hope for from a Russo novel. Amazing characters—Lincoln a real estate broker, Teddy a small-press publisher, and Mickey a musician still living the rock and roll life, as well as assorted wonderfully drawn minor characters—a deep understanding of communities, the perfect mix of laugh-out-loud comedy and bittersweet sadness. In something of a departure for Russo, though, there’s a mystery—one that has haunted them all since a Memorial Day weekend in 1971 in the same house on the Vineyard. It comes to a head as the three reconnect and secrets are finally revealed, and it brings his next great book to a new level. Lucky us, who get to read it."
Publisher Knopf
Publication Date 2019
Section New Hardcover - Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781101947746
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes a new revelation: a riveting story about the abiding yet complex power of friendship.
One beautiful September day, three men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college circa the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today—Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971: the disappearance of the woman each of them loved—Jacy Rockafellow. Now, more than forty years later, as this new weekend unfolds, three lives are displayed in their entirety while the distant past confounds the present like a relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are . . . also introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as constricting and rewarding as those of family or any other community.
For both longtime fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are . . . is a stunning demonstration of a highly acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable achievement.
