I have read all 10 of Richard Russo’s novels and all four of his short story collections. I would recommend them to any reader, any time. So, please believe me when I say that I was befuddled when reading Russo’s new novel, Under the Falls, and experienced a creeping sense of disconnection and dissatisfaction ... This other book simply did not work for me. It jettisoned everything I thought was coming for something else. Even as I adjusted to what the book was attempting, it all felt at odds with Russo’s amazing gift for character interiority grounded in place.
At its best when he leans into the complexity of the homecoming theme ... A thriller, but at its best it’s concerned about that matter of haunting — about whether the child can ever be reconciled with the adult, and who gets hurt along the way.
Russo’s dark and brooding novel is cinematically lush and emotionally potent, a shrewd treatise on the perils of reunion, remorse, and the quest for redemption.
