The Whore's Child: Stories

Great book of short stories - under reaching but so psychologically honest they grow on you.

Awesome. There is just something to listening to books on tape in the car. The writer's from Maine, sounds so exotic listening to these stories. However, most of them tend to be about the quiet human suffering and fighting the boredom of comfort. Written from a male perspective, it is what I imagine must be going on in my father's mind when he isn't talking, which is often.

The story that gives the title to the book is truly great. And the first stories that follow are close to that excellency. Then the book loses some of that punch in the rest of stories, but the overall feeling is very good. He is a great narrator and he knows how to set a tone, that I would qualify as bittersweet. 3'5 stars, close to 4.

Russo's strength is his character development. Doesn't work as well in short stories.

The first and the last stories are very good. I also really liked the second one. There's one piece in here that seems to be the inspiration for a scene in Russo's hilarious novel Straight Man. It was real fun to see how the writer transformed the characters, plot and voice from one draft to the next. My criticism for this collection has to be the lack of breadth in subject matter of...more

The first and the last stories are very good. I also really liked the second one. There's one piece in here that seems to be the inspiration for a scene in Russo's hilarious novel Straight Man. It was real fun to see how the writer transformed the characters, plot and voice from one draft to the next. My criticism for this collection has to be the lack of breadth in subject matter of characters. All the protagonists are university professors in their fifties or adolescent boys from 10-13 with narcissistic mothers in failing marriages.   hide

I only got part way through this and found the stories repetitive