Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.

"Somebody's Fool" by Richard Russo returns readers to the familiar setting of North Bath, New York, a town that has captured the hearts of many through Russo's previous works. This time, the narrative picks up with the aftermath of Donald "Sully" Sullivan's passing, a character whose presence still looms large over the town and its inhabitants.

Russo's storytelling is as rich and engaging as ever, weaving together the lives of North Bath's residents with humor and empathy. The novel explores the themes of legacy, memory, and the complex web of human relationships.

Told through the eyes of characters like Peter, Sully's son, and Chief of Police Douglas Raymer, readers are invited to reflect on the influence of the past and the possibility of personal growth amidst life's challenges.

The book stands on its own as a testament to Russo's ability to craft a world so real that it feels like returning home.

With a keen ear for dialogue and a deep appreciation for the quirks of humanity, "Somebody's Fool" is a touching, funny, and ultimately hopeful story about the fools we all can be and the wisdom we sometimes find in our folly.

Russo's latest work is a reminder that life goes on, even in the wake of loss, and that in the end, it's the connections we forge with one another that matter most.

This novel will resonate with anyone who has ever grappled with the shadows left behind by those they've lost and the light they continue to cast in our lives.

Very interesting book with a love story and a murder mystery all rolled into one. North Beth is going through a lot of different changes right now. Because the man named Donald Sully Who has been dead for ten years. They wanted to merge the town wit SCHUYLE Springs. Because the town had more money. His son named Peter was dealing with a lot of problems as well. Because he had problems with his son named Thompson. He wanted to know if he was like his father, his father to his son. The town also was dissolving the police department as well. They had a new police chief named CHA R ICE BO. N. D. The old police chief wasn't was her ex lover. They had to come together again because they found a body in an old hotel and they didn't know who it was. There was another player in this book as well named Ruth. Who was peter's x lover. She also had a daughter named j. A. N. E!Y. Jenny also had a child named Tina. Who was falling in love with peter's other son named will. So many different aspects in this book plots and in themes. You never knew what was gonna happen.. It all centered around this body they found in this hotel. North B ETH was run down and very low-income. The next town over was becoming yuppy . You can see how clashes between the two towns were emerging. Everybody in this town was having a hard time accepting the fact things were changing. There's so many different aspects in this book. It's very interesting to read to see how people do things differently. When there's money involved and no money involved. The title somebody's fool is really appropriate for the this book. Because people didn't see the town is where the next town over. Because everybody is usually the same. It's how you cover your tracks.

Somebody's Fool is the third in a series I think I missed something by not reading the first two books but will go back to read them now. The characters are engaging this book set in a small town in upstate New York. Their backstories are revealed in such a way that we come to know them.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my review copy of this book.

Somebody's Fool was my first book of this series. I mostly enjoyed it, but the inner dialogue slows the pacing a bit. I think coming in invested from the previous books probably makes a difference.

I read Somebody's Fool back in August but somehow failed to post a review. Richard Russo is a master storyteller and one of my favorite authors in the world. Before I sat down to read the last book of the North Bath series, I spent some time thinking about what I find so captivating. It came to me that I honestly remember little of the plot lines but what I find unforgettable are the characters and small town settings. His characters are ordinary people but portrayed with such insight and humanity that they jump off the page and into my heart.

In Somebody's Fool, Sully is ten years gone but his spirit lives on in the lives he touched and the town he loved. Sully's son Peter, far more like his father than he cares to admit, is now the main character as the town struggles with loss and change. I expect a lot from Russo's writing and he always delivers.

I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.

I could not get into this book. I've read other Russo books and loved them, but this one is definitely a sequel. Since I had not read the previous book, I found this on tedious and mystifying. I think that if you have read the previous book, you will want to (need to) read this one, but without that prior knowledge something is missing.

3 stars for Russo's writing, probably more stars if you've read the previous book.

Somebody's Fool, the third book in Richard Russo's North Bath Trilogy, offers careful insights into dysfunctional families and the intricate ways that relationships evolve, expand and contract to absorb the dysfunction. Russo also excavates how the experience of aging helps us learn to accept, appreciate and adapt our relationships and feelings about others and ourselves. Somebody's Fool is just a beautiful novel.

I loved the two other books in the series and this one is every bit as good. Russo is such a lovable writer. The characters are real unbelievable and he makes the setting come alive as well. I will be sad to say goodbye to these great characters and their story. I hope Russell continues to write many more wonderful believable works.

This is a not-quite-four star rating. I miss Sully. He was crabby and seemed like a ne'er-do-well, but, for all his flaws, I loved his sense of humor and how deeply he cared about the people in his life. I wondered how this story would pick up after his passing. I feel like this story just picks up with some of the secondary characters and, surprisingly, shows how despite Sully's worries and the lists he gave asking them to look out for each other, they actually do OK. I did not see it before but Russo's series reminds me a bit of Wendell Berry's Port William novels. If you started with the series, you should finish it off with this one (although, I wonder if there will be -- and there could be another). If not, go back and start at the beginning. PS. I never saw the movie so I don't see Paul Newman as Sully or Philip Seymour Hoffman as Raymer, but I might watch them now that I am done.

Richard Russo spins such a deliciously engaging yarn about these Empire Falls peeps; they’re relatable & entertaining. His writing is always on-point & a great flip after watching “Empire Falls” for the 483rd time.
Pick it up, y’all - you can thank me later.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

Richard Russo does it again! Warm and witty, we are welcome back to upstate New York. it’s like we never left. It’s like catching up with old friends after a long absence. Definitely worth the trip.

Sully's ghost wasn't enough to keep me interested in North Bath

Reading Somebody's Fool is like reading Don Quixote without Quixote or The Catcher in the Rye without Holden Caulfield. Like the solar system without the sun. There's a central character missing and each satellite character continues to reflect the warmth of the missing character.

If this is your first North Bath book or even your first Russo book there's plenty here for you to love. In fact, you'll probably love the book more than I did. The characters are flawed and interesting, and the story is humorous and entertaining. It's probably a little too long (could have gotten to the point faster) but I enjoyed reading it.

But I missed Sully too much. And so did all the other characters.

Story: 3 star
Character Development: 5 stars
Writing: 4 stars
Lack of Sully: -1 stars

I wanted to love it, but I really struggled with this one. Thinking it's just timing on my part as I'm a big fan of Russo and The Bridge of Sighs is one of my all-time favorites. Certainly enjoyed Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool. But this slow pace of this one really didn't work for me. Not never, just not now.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Richard Russo’s writing. What a joy to be back in North Bath with the familiar characters (even Sully is there in memory and spirit.)

I started this series at the end and now I’ll go back to fill in the first two. I loved this story and enjoyed these characters. For me, a completely absorbing reading experience.

Wonderfully engaging ongoing tale of the author’s set of characters in a small town in upstate New York. Whether these characters are familiar to the reader or not, their backstories are revealed in such a way that we come to know them, as well as their forebears.

Years have passed since the death of Sully Sullivan but he seems to exist on every page of Richard Russo’s Somebody’s Fool in the minds and sometimes hearts of those who knew him well and miss him and those who don’t miss him at all. Taking up the reigns, sometimes unsuccessfully is Sully’s son, Peter, who has been entrusted by Sully with keeping an eye on a list of people who Sully evidently kept an eye on. It’s a group of people who might be considered oddballs like Tina, who, with her grandfather, made a thriving business out of what others would call junk or Rub who almost faded away quite literally when Sully died if Peter hadn’t called on him and given him a purpose.

Parallel to Peter’s story, Peter’s discovery that he might be more like his father than he ever knew, is Police Chief Raymer or is that former Police Chief as North Bath is absorbed by wealthy neighbor Schuyler Springs and Doug Raymer decides that it might be time to retire. His former girlfriend, Charice, (or is that current? Doug Raymer doesn’t know for certain) is now chief of police for Schuyler Springs. When a dead body is found in an abandoned hotel that everyone in North Bath was hoping might be sold and revitalize their businesses, Raymer finds himself playing detective. Who was this man? Someone passing through or one of their own community? And, if the latter, why wasn’t he reported missing? While the investigation occurs, Raymer faces truths about himself and his relationship with Charice and her brother with whom he has a complicated relationship and who undertakes the job to show Raymer what it means to be a Black person in a small town or pretty much anywhere.

As Russo introduces us or reintroduces, as the case may be, to these characters, he also allows them to share their insights:

“I don’t know, Birdie. It’s a slippery slop. Expecting things to be fair? Next, you’ll be demanding justice. Equal opportunity. One morning you’ll wake up and discover you’ve moved to Denmark.”

Peter to Birdie
What might in another author’s hands come off as preachy, in Russo’s becomes insightful and informed with gentle humor. No one is perfect. Everyone has issues, some more than others. But one of the great things about this life is the opportunity to start over that begins every day, every hour, minute, to learn new things about yourself, and if you hate those things, change them. If you can. But you can’t change everything. Sometimes it’s just too late. And that’s something you have to live with and make amends as best possible.

The humanity of these characters is readily apparent. Most of them care, even if they have a hard time showing it or don’t know how to show it. They struggle and fail and sometimes succeed. And while it’s not always done gracefully, it’s mostly done with good humor.

With regards to my intro, I do believe that I saw the movie of the first book in the series starring Paul Newman as Sully. But even if that’s a mistaken belief on my part, I didn’t need to read the other two books to follow this one. However, backwards as it is, I’m going to read those two books just because I loved this one so much and want to find out more about these characters. Of course, I’m also wishing that this isn’t a trilogy, that Russo doesn’t stop here because I really want to know what happens to Tina or at least have some idea of where she goes in this life of hers as well as Will, Peter’s son. Where will the next generation go?

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me a copy for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the characters in this book. My own weakness is that I took my time reading the book, and I couldn’t keep track of all of the characters at first…perhaps this would be less of a problem for someone who had read the two previous books in this series. The one area of the novel that felt a tad disjointed for me was when we learn the identity of the body: I didn’t actually remember that character at all. Again, this could be my own failing. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

This book is the first novel I've ever read by Richard Russo. I vaguely recall watching the film Nobody's Fool with Paul Newman on late night cable in the 1990s and I know it was based on a book of the same name by Russo (in fact, that was the first of the "Fool" books which make up this particular series). I recently watched the TV series Lucky Hank which was based on another of Russo's books (Straight Man) and found it darkly humorous (and slightly odd), so when I got the opportunity to read this book I thought, 'Why not?'.

Basically Somebody's Fool is about a small town that is dying and a handful of its inhabitants who are at various stages of life doing their best to figure it out (the whole life thing) and, for the most part, failing in unspectacular ways. If that sounds depressing, well, it is at times; it's also poignant, funny, and deeply thought provoking.

Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo is different from what I generally read. I won't go so far as to say it's outside my comfort zone but if I owned a hard copy of this book it would probably be on the bottom shelf, in the corner, behind the end table and badly in need of dusting because it doesn't get picked up often (or ever).

Suffice to say this is not my "go to" type of reading material. It's very long, it drags at times, and there's a lot of angst and melancholy between deeply thoughtful passages and off-the-wall humor. Liked it, didn't love it; but after finishing the book it kept me thinking... That's almost always a good sign. Things that encourage thought.

This book is long, at times I struggled to continue reading, but I was usually glad I did. I'm giving this three and a half stars (bumped up to four) with the understanding that I may have missed the point completely.