Richard Russo is...a perceptive and empathetic essayist and critic. That skill is manifest in his second nonfiction collection, Life and Art ... Remarkable ... As is true of his fiction, he's a direct and plainspoken stylist. But that lack of affectation should not be confused with an absence of depth. Despite their brevity and transparency, Life and Art's insightful explorations offer more grist for contemplation than many longer and superficially more complex works.
Russo is quite a bit better than this collection would suggest, but completists will forgive him ... It would take a slightly different set of essays and more scrupulous pruning to produce the version of that book a devoted admirer might imagine. Not much of interest is left to say about the Covid-19 pandemic, and Russo says some of it more than once ... Far from fresh ... Is it really the right time for an essay framed around Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
Stimulating ... In The Lives of Others, Russo sensitively probes the ethics of writing fiction from the perspective of characters who belong to different identity groups than the author ... Provides an insider’s view of the book to screen adaptation process ... Russo’s skill as a storyteller is on full display throughout, but the impact of the autobiographical essays is dulled by repetition. For instance, Marriage Story and What We Really Want from Stories read like successive drafts of the same piece, both using Russo’s mother’s oversimplified explanation of her reasons for separating from his father as a springboard to investigate the contradictory power of stories to alternatively reveal or dissemble. Still, Russo’s fans will savor this.
