Author: Richard Russo
Enjoyment Rating: ***
This book would be rated: PG or PG-13-- I can't remember anything objectionable. Maybe some bad language?
Source: Library Copy
Books I've read this year: 126
There are upsides and downsides to most families. I've made conscious decisions to do some things like my parents did, and to do other things in opposition to the way they did things. I wouldn't be surprised if my kids grow up craving quiet houses with lots of space they can call their own. Novelist Richard Russo grew up as the only child of a bipolar single mother, and he seems to use Elsewhere as a kind of therapy writing-- he recounts the good times and the increasing bad times, and the burden of being the center of his mother's universe (for example, when he got into college in Arizona, they both moved from upstate New York, where his mother had lived her whole life so she could be close to him).
While Elsewhere was interesting and as well-written as Russo's fiction, it was also a hard book to read. While I'm sure that my kids whine about me and I've been known to whine about my own mother from time to time, it feels a little unsettling to read a book where the main objective is to write about how difficult his mother was. He has PLENTY of stuff to write about, and I'm sure it was difficult, and I think it can be both immensely healing to write about and such a relief for people in similar situations to be able to read a book like this, but I also spent a lot of time wondering what his mother would think if she were still around to read what Russo had written.
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