Rating: 
Summary: The Golden Boy of Literature
Review: Richard Russo is the Tom Hanks of literature. He's more than just a competent writer-he's a golden boy who just merited Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls. Russo is a hardworking, compassionate author and he has produced a body of work that his readers have learned to trust. The Whore's Child And Other Stories does not break that trust, but it does test it a bit.There are three kinds of stories in this book. "Joy Ride" and "The Mysteries of Linwood Hart" are high impact stories written in 3rd person about prepubescent male protagonists observing their parents' marriage problems. These are wonderful stories, my favorite in the collection both for their tenderness and insight. "Monhegan Light," "Buoyancy" and "Poison" take the middle-aged or retired male as their protagonist and explore the discrepancies of marriage in the post prime of life. Russo does these stories well, and if they seem similar to each other, that only strengthens the composition of the book as a whole. The effect is that of riffs on a theme, petaling out of the observant center. "The Whore's Child" and "The Farther You Go" weaken this collection however. In "The Whore's Child" the voice is of a college writing teacher (a familiar Russo point of view), but the story is that of how Sister Ursula has lived her entire life as a lie in repudiation of the hurt in her childhood. It's interesting enough and competently written, but it doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the collection. It also lacks the visceral impact of some of the other stories. "The Farther You Go" bothered me because I'd read it before-or large chunks of it anyway-as part of Russo's excellent novel The Straight Man. It ended differently than in the novel, but it needed the rest of the novel to make it work as a piece. Without the context of The Straight Man, "The Farther You Go" seemed like a "so what" story. So x and y happens, big deal. So: two weaker stories and five stronger ones. (And the term "weaker" is relative here: we are talking about a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.) Still and all, good to read and lots of food for thought.
Rating: 
Summary: A satisfying collection of short stories
Review: Richard Russo's The Whore's Child provides a satisfying collection of short stories about diverse personalities; from a jaded Hollywood moviemaker's romance of the past to a child's cross-country escape and a man's reflections on lost opportunities caused by romance.
Rating:
Summary: Great group of stories...
Review: Russo is a great author, and if you're not familiar with him, you can dabble with his work in this collection. The only story that doesn't fit is the title story. The characters are strong and the feeling is strongly American. Russo will be a bright star of modern literature for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Short stories by Russo
Review: Russo's reputation hangs primarily on his ability to present the conflicting emotions of relationships with comic brio as well as pathos. It's the comedy/tragedy parallel, and he's a master at that dichotomy.
The Whore's Child is a collection of seven 'short' stories, and the title story is the most powerful, IMO. It concerns a nun, Sister Ursula, who takes a writing class, and her submission to the class concerning her lifelong search for her absent father...
Richard Russo is a master of barbed dialogue, and his wry wit and humor when writing about The Human Condition come thru clearly in every story in this collection.
Rating:
Summary: Stories and Straight Man revisited
Review: The first story is worth the price of admission. The beauty of Russo's writing is that he's not afraid to use his own experience, to build himself into the character. Of course it helps that Russo's character is so likeable that it's easy to fall into the stories along with him. Beyond all that, Russo has included two stories which are clearly re-workings of ideas from _Straight Man_ which has to be one of the best books of the last ten years. I always wonder when a novelist takes on the short story. Russo tells good stories and while I wouldn't say these are on the par of Carver, Woolf, or Thom Jones, they are all certainly easier to get into and, in many ways, more likeable. Russo is one of our best writers and it's about time he was awarded such a distinction as the Pulitzer.
Rating:
Summary: A novelist's masterful short stories
Review: Why is it, do you suppose, that short story collections don't sell as well as novels? And why is it that critics and readers seem often to look down their noses at the short stories of established novelists? In this instance, as much as I admire Richard Russo's novels, and I admire them hugely, I will have to enter a minority report and say that these heartfelt, lapidary short stories trump Russo's denser, more complex novels. Not that I'd want to be without the larger books. Each story in this collection conjures up a world that seems real: one can see, feel, taste, hear the settings, and can get inside the minds and hearts of the characters. In a story like 'Monhegan Light,' we even come to understand probably the most elliptical character, the painter Trevor, in a few deft strokes of the storyteller's brush. As always, Russo's own great heart comes through in his tales. Make no mistake, Russo is an important writer. And his short stories are as breathtaking as his novels.
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