A Famous Fellow Returns to His Hometown
Tyler Sinclair is a famous musician who returns to his hometown of Stone Mountain to do a benefit concert. He has never been back to Stone Mountain in the almost two decades since he left. And he left in an abrupt manner saying goodbye to no one. Additionally, in those intervening years any letter he received from home got returned to sender unopened.
Among those he left behind were his good friend Curt, and his friend Tim Dockery, who they call Doc, and a girl who was a part of their group, Freddi. The reason he has come back now is that Doc is a paraplegic and he needs expensive medical treatment after being cut off by Medicaid. Tyler Sinclair is doing a charity concert as a first stop of his thirty-city tour.
As altruistic as it all sounds, there are some extenuating circumstances in the background, namely, that Tyler was involved in the accident where Doc became a paraplegic. As teenagers, Doc, Curt, and Tyler would go to the Falls and have contests to see who could swing out the farthest into the water. They used a rope that was tied to a tree branch. On the day of the accident, Curt made his jump first. Determined to beat him, Doc had Tyler give him a push. Instead of landing in the water, Doc landed on an iron pipe that extended across the top of the dam. After hitting the pipe, he fell into the water and sank. Tyler was the one to pull him out of the water and save his life.
Also impacting the current relationship of these old friends are the facts that Tyler’s famous band is called Stone Mountain and the band’s most famous song is called The Long Fall.
For all these reasons, Tyler was uncertain as to how he would be received at home and it was not his idea to go back to Stone Mountain to do the benefit, it was his manager’s. Suffice it to say Tyler is not pleased to be back. He doesn’t want to know if he is seen as a hero or a villain for what happened to Doc. Perhaps he’s a bit skittish as well. Does he wonder what the folks at home think about him turning the stories of his life into a profitable endeavor?
I am a big fan of Richard Russo‘s work, and I particularly loved his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Empire Falls. What I love so much about that book was the character development. However, fabulous character development is not the case with this newest work.
This becomes understandable when readers see a note from the author at the end of the book. He tells us this story started off as a TV pilot script and that it lost its way during the Writers Guild of America strike. Instead of becoming a TV movie, it became a book.
We all know that books and movies are two different beasts. In a book we can be inside a character’s head so much as to know his every thought and motivation. It doesn’t work that way in a movie, so this movie-turned-book is lacking in that regard.
But even without this character development, Richard Russo‘s writing is propulsive. I wanted to know what happened and why in this book which includes – in rather short order – the death of three people from Tyler‘s past and present lives.
There are a couple of points in the book – one very minor and one very major – where current technology makes the issue at hand a moot point. But, when you have a very famous, well-established author, perhaps editors aren’t as bold at speaking up.
Bottom line, I gobbled this book up, but did not love it. However, thanks to the fact that I did love these Richard Russo books: Elsewhere, That Old Cape Magic, Chances Are, and Empire Falls, you better believe I’ll be reading the next book that Richard Russo publishes.
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If you like my writing, I hope you will check out my new book, Chai on Life. It contains 36 slice-of-life stories ranging in topics from belly fat to Billy Joel. It is available wherever books are sold and on Amazon. There is even a companion journal for you to write the stories of your life.
Chai on Life is available in 3 formats: Hard Back, Kindle, and AudioBook.
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