Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs is the latest pick for Oprah Winfrey’s book club.
Russo’s novel, published in 2007 by Knopf, tells the story of Lou C. “Lucy” Lynch, an upstate New York man writing a history of his family and hometown, and Bobby Marconi, a man from Lucy’s hometown living in Venice. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “rich, confounding and absorbing—utterly irresistible.”
Winfrey announced the novel’s selection on CBS Mornings, where host Gayle King noted that after Winfrey called Russo to tell him his book had been picked, Russo didn’t initially realize who was on the line with him.
“The lie that I was told…was that I was going to be talking with someone from Publishers Weekly about a new book of essays that I have coming out,” he said. “Whoever was making the introductions, somehow or other, I came in late, so I didn’t know who I was talking to. It completely baffled me, because whoever this woman was, she kept wanting to talk about a 20-year-old novel of mine called Bridge of Sighs.”
Asked if Bridge of Sighs was a difficult book to write, Russo replied, “This was the most difficult of all of my novels to write. There were so many moving parts. Lots of characters, probably more characters than any of the other books that I’ve written. My usual focus, because of who I am and where I grew up, I view the world through the lens of place and class.…This book pulls back a little bit, and race becomes a subject.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
