Rating: 
Summary: One of my Top Ten Favorites of all time
Review: I read this book at the beginning of last year and have probably recommended it to everyone that has ever asked me what I read since then. I'm a big Russo fan anyway, but Straight Man is simply amazing. Hank is the funniest novel character I have ever come across- insightful, macho in the way women just want to laugh at and then hug, and loveable. I loved him so much by the end of the book that I wanted to cry because I would never know what else happened to him. His wife too is beautifully written, as she reacts to Hank just the way I would - with an amused 'are-you-ever-going-to-grow-up-love?' feeling. Books very rarely make me laugh out loud. This one, I read much of while sitting at my local cafe and, at one point, I wished I was reading it at home because I soooo wanted to bellow with laughter which isn't normally recommended in a public place! I cannot recommend this novel enough. I read on average about 250 books a year, but Straight Man stands out as easily the best read I had in 2001.
Rating:
Summary: Everything a good novel ought to be....
Review: In this tale of a bemused mid-life male academic, Russo makes us smile, touches our emotions, and keeps us turning pages. Most of the detail about life, love, and jealousies on a college campus rings true, if a little over the top, helping make this a welcome addition to the academic-satire fiction bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Straight Man is a great novel.
Review: The setting for this book is the pressure cooker world of small town academia. The central character is English professor and department chairman Henry Devereaux Jr., who on the precipice of the age of fifty is forced to examine his life, his relationships, his career and his state of health. The book is supported by a diverse cast of interrelated characters each of whom exerts positive and negative forces on Henry's life.
A central scene in which Henry catches a goose with his bare hands lacks verisimilitude, (Just try catching a goose with your bare hands!), but hey, it's fiction. The book also could have used just a little more editing. I found the time line of the story a little confusing. But perhaps some of the things that left me confused kept me wanting to find out more.
Straight Man is an extremely well written work by a great writer, and I will definitely be reading his other books.
Rating:
Summary: Review for Straight Man
Review: Read this if you like to laugh at life, especially if you are in academics and find the people around you humorous. You'll love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Subtly hilarious
Review: This book was passed on to me by a friend, but I had seen it several times in bookstores and on Amazon. I wanted to read it, but I kept passing over it. Well, if you're doing the same thing, stop and succumb to the charm of Russo's writing. This was one of the best novels I've read in a long time. I didn't frequently belly-laugh, but I chuckled and chortled (yes, even chortled) at this book. Well written and highly accurate (I, too, was a professor of English)... this book gets a huge recommendation from me.
Rating:
Summary: A 5-star comedy
Review: No, it's not madcap, filled with gags, or addicted to Grouch-esque poses. But it is wry and wise, and even the most unbelievable scenes seem the reasonable outcome of typical human folly. There are laugh-out-loud moments in this book that are not at all foolish, and the idea that people can be worth smiling at without becoming silly or stupid is both worthwhile and rare.
Rating: 
Summary: Straight Man has a few dips in the road
Review: I am a Russo fan. Make no bones about it. However, his "Straight Man" was hard to follow at times. Not that the lead character wasn't perfect. He was. Not that his wife wasn't wonderful. She was. But, somehow I kept getting confused about the colleagues in his college English Department. Who was who.. which one was the one who bought the land and the house across from him? Who was the Dean and who was the Head of Arts and Sciences. Though the work is witty and extremely funny and the author's observations about petty organizations and the middle aged is superb... there were times in this novel when I wished he would stick with the lead character's family and be less willing to involve the 20 year olds that populated his very boring English class. The book was particularly slow when the lead character entered class. Richard Russo does such a good job with multiple characters, and he does best when there is something clear and delineating about the characters... a bar owner, versus a diner owner, versus a lawyer, versus a blue collar guy. When all of his characters are more or less of the same economic and educational strata... it is no less funny, but it is hard to SEE the characters as distinct. The reader works harder at keeping each in mind and thus becomes frustrated at times. You might expect this kind of confusion reading Tolsoy's War and Peace... but not while reading Richard Russo.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious like Catch-22
Review: Excellent for its sense of humor, mainly. This is one of the funniest books I've read, and reminded me of Catch-22 for the variety of characters. Russo describes them without laboring, so that halfway through the book, he has more than a dozen characters available for his protagonist to play off, and the ways he plays off them are hilarious. The book has a funny combination of outlandish events and normal circumstance. Some might think that the combination of events is too unlikely, but I'm willing to excuse it because the book is so much fun. It's not completely without purpose either, it just doesn't feel weighty.
Rating: 
Summary: A solid read--funny, insightful`
Review: If you are familiar at all with college faculty or want to learn more about our professors when you were in college, this is a great book for you. Russo has a great command of the language of academia and I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occassion. Maybe it's just me, but the epilogue tied together too many of the loose ends. Sometimes I like novels to leave you hanging and yet Russo cleans up all of his messes (I suppose most people will appreciate this). It's almost like he offered that up for the paperback edition because too many people complained about unresolved issues. It was almost anti-climatic. But that is my only complaint on this fine read.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful
Review: As a professor at a small college, I wondered -- has Russo been at our faculty meetings??
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