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Rating: 
Summary: Not for the young and vibrant
Review: I did not enjoy reading about middle-aged men in the midst of a crisis. That is what most of the stories are about. I did not connect or relate to any of the characters. I was happy that the stories were short because I could not stand an entire novel of such depressing and predictable content. Yes, this book was well written, however, if that is a large portion of justifying this book as excellent then I would advise exploring other kinds of books;there are plenty of books that are both interesting and well written. I would mostly recommend this book for men and even then, middle-aged men. I think this is a better audience for the author's style of writing.
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Summary: This book reaffirmed my aesthetic
Review: I teach at a large university and had recently spent a lot of time among academics, learning and thinking about literary and critical theory. I love that stuff for the avenues of understanding it can make available to us and for the depth it can add to our favorite books. But spend enough time in Theory-Land and among the examples its inhabitants trot out, and you start to believe that there's no place anymore for a good story, well told. Well, Theory-Land is a nice place to visit, but I've no interest in living there, and thankfully The Whore's Child brought me back. These are, simply, great stories. And I use the word "simply" here paradoxically, because there is absolutely nothing simple about creating characters on a page that come alive with all the complexity and mystery of real people whose lives we can enter at their most revealing points. This is not to say that Russo does not experiment with form, because he does--the title story is essentially a story within a story, showing us large chunks of a student writer's manuscript; the last story is told through numerous facets of a young boy's consciousness in one of the best evocations of youthful understanding and misunderstanding I've ever read--but unlike so much "cutting edge" writing these days, Russo's experiments in form are always secondary to the story itself. One never gets the feeling that he's impressed at his own cleverness, winking over his shoulders at the other literary theorists also "in the know". Read Empire Falls for the evocation of a small town and the way that town's character intertwines with the characters of its citizens; read Straight Man for the send-up of Academia and the often caustic humor of the first-person voice, both obscuring and revealing a tender and surprisingly idealistic core. But for the range of genius possible in unself-conscious narrative, for the depth of feeling that good writing can provoke, for the precise niche of character that is the hallmark of literary fiction, I can think of no book I've read recently that matches The Whore's Child.
Rating: 
Summary: He's a long-distance writer, not a sprinter
Review: I'm a huge fan of Russo's work, and have read all his books, some more than once. The way Russo creates characters that I can identify with, in the midst of banal situations, is a rare talent. So I naturally bought this book immediately. Russo, however, is a long-distance writer, not a sprinter. His stories don't give him the space he needs to develop characters. While several of the stories in this collection are gems, one cannot help but think that Russo could have taken them further - a few hundred pages further - and make novels out of them. I'll still give this 4 stars because Russo is one of the finest stylests writing in English today, and has one of the best ears for dialog. A great writer, but not a great book.
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Summary: An absorbing series of peeks into others? lives.
Review: I'm always surprised at how many people I know (even writers!) who haven't read his novels, which do something rare in American literature: talk about the dirty, shameful topic of failure. He's a poet of it, whether of failed marital or parental relationships, or of careers and dreams. I enter his world the way I enter Balzac or George Eliot. There's a depth of social observation blending with psychological insight that no one else comes close to in contemporary fiction. He's not a flashy writer and he's not fashionably nasty or cynical--but he's rich, rewarding and deeply compassionate even of his fools. This collection has all those qualities, though I prefer his novels
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Character Tales
Review: I've never read a Richard Russo book before, but I heard him read the title story on NPR and was fascinated. Russo quickly brings to life images of characters and divines their motivations for our personal pleasure. All the characters are interesting and tragic in the small events of their lives. I highly recommend for anyone who likes stories based on personalities, and especially for anyone interested in psychology (from a case-study point of view, of course).
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Summary: Whets your appetite for Russo's next great novel
Review: I???m hoping Russo???s just warming up for a big, fat novel with this wonderful collection of stories. Because reading The Whore???s Child makes you want MORE. All of these stories are written with Russo???s subtle combination of humor and pathos, which imbues them with a nostalgic, bittersweet feel. Like much of his fiction, most of the stories in this book take place in small towns with small-town (but not small-minded) characters as the central focus. From the nun who tries her hand at writing a memoir of her lonely life to the mother and son who take a harrowing cross-country journey, each story pulls you in and leaves you anxiously awaiting another novel as great as Empire Falls.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Quit Your Day Job
Review: Richard Russo can be a great writer, as "Empire Falls" proved. His best work comes in dealing with the plight of trapped citizens of small, fading industrial towns as in "Empire Falls", "Nobody's Fool", and "The Risk Pool". "The Whore's Child" then, does little to showcase his true talent. Most of the stories follow middle-aged professors experiencing mid-life regrets, a la Russo's novel "Straight Man". One story, "The Farther You Go" is later used (or copied from depending on the date of publication) almost exactly in "Straight Man", right down to the narrator's first name. For anyone who really enjoyed "Straight Man", this collection of stories is great. Those who have little interest in aged professors with no REAL problems whining are better advised to stay away from this book. I definitely fall into the latter category. In terms of the stories, I thought the title piece would have made a better novella or novel than a short story. The problem is that the tale of the nun is told second-hand when allowing the reader to actually read her story would better allow us to experience the story and to be moved by it as her classmates and professor were. The constraints of the short story do not allow me to get involved with Sister Ursula, so that I never really care about her. "The Farther You Go", "Buoyancy", and "Poison" all follow along the similar line of an older married guy in a stale marriage on an island in Maine. "Monhegan Light" differs slightly in that the middle-aged guy is widowed and a cinematographer instead of a professor. None have the humor and power of Russo's better novels. "Joyride" is the story of a mother and son's doomed flight across the country that is more true to form. "The Mysteries of Linwood Hart" is the story that best captures the spirit of "Empire Falls"--it's a serious of episodes of 10-year-old Linwood Hart as he begins to truly understand the world. It is by far the best of the collection in my humble opinion. Most of Russo's writing is good as usual, but one sentence from "Joyride" is one of the worst I have ever seen in print. It reads: "My throat constricted with the knowledge of who I was and what." Try reading that aloud; the "and what" makes no sense at the end of a sentence. "What" at the end almost implies a question, not a statement. At the very least, to end with "what" sounds incomplete, like there should be more there. The better sentence would have been "who and what I was". I can't believe an editor didn't correct that sentence; it's positively awful. Anyway, except for "Linwood Hart" and "Joyride" (which has its moments), this collection of short stories holds little interest for those not experiencing a mid-life crisis. This attempt to cash in on the success of "Empire Falls" has convinced me that Russo needs to stick with his day job.
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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.
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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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