Customer Reviews

Mohawk

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With his Pulitzer Prize winning and best selling novel Empire Falls, Richard Russo has become a well-known author. In Mohawk, his first novel, we see, if somewhat imperfectly, the writer he would become.

Like his other novels, Mohawk is the story of a small town in the northeastern part of the U.S. The town - in this case Mohawk - is a place on the wane as the industry that fueled it peters out. In this story, we follow the adventures of Dallas Younger, his ex-wife Anne and their son Randall in the late '60s and early '70s. Dallas lives a life of general irresponsibility and likes it that way. Anne pines away for her cousin's husband, a wheelchair-bound man who she sleeps with every twenty years or so. Randall has his own issues to deal with including his efforts to evade the draft.

As with Russo's other stories, the characters are more important than the plot, and he is able to make them compelling enough that we want to keep reading. Compared with his other novels, this one is rather serious, although there is some humor.

This novel is good but not as great as his other books; in a way, this book is like an exhibition game before the regular season; we get a general feel for what Russo does but it is still just warming up. For example, in Dallas, we see the prototype for the deeper Sully in Nobody's Fool. Other elements of this story are revisited in his other stories.

I would recommend this book, but don't judge Russo by this story. He's just getting warmed up here.

Richard Russo has become one of my favorite novelists, and Mohawk is one of the best books I've read this summer. I would have given it five stars had it not been a little slow going at the beginning.

Like most Russo books, Mohawk is a little short on plot, but very strong on characterization and relationships. Mohawk, New York is a leather manufacturing town whose best days are long gone. The residents of Mohawk also seem to have their best days behind them, with many shattered and unfulfilled dreams. Mohawk centers around two first cousins, Anne Younger and Diane Wood, and their families. Anne has always been in love with Diane's husband, Dan. Dan is a paraplegic as the result of an accident. Anne's ne'er-do-well husband, Dallas, never seems to do right by the people he loves. Anna's son, Randall, starts slacking in school as he seems more accepted when his grades start sliding. Diane's mother has a hissy fit and needs to be hospitalized every time she doesn't get her on way. Anne's mother tortures both Anne and her father. And Mather Grouse (Anna's father) lives his life by a moral code that affects everyone in his family. Mohawk is a book of unlikely heroes as people try to make right of the past.

Russo is a master of observation and turns this talent into an art form. Some of those that touched a nerve include:

When discussing dealing with her husband, "Mrs. Grouse had come to see virtually everything he enjoyed as a potential source of upset. She seemed intent on making his remaining years one long Lenten season."

"the most effective lies were those liberally laced with truth. The lie could be ninety-nine parts truth to one part falsehood, one tarnished part mingling with the pure until it was all tainted, more false than pure fabrication."

Mather Grouse "certainly understood how perversely loyal human beings could be to mistakes."

Unfortunately, Russo is not as prolific as other writers, although perhaps that is what makes his books so special. I've already read Straight Man, Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool. So I guess I'll just have to content myself with going back and reading some of his earlier works instead.

A wonderful work, exciting. A truly literary pageturner with fully realized loveable characters. Completely unpretentious. Even Wild Bill--Russo is totally forgiven for his creation, a patent Faulknerian manchild--is never doubted for a moment and plays a very pivotal part in the author's unfolding of this unforgettable town and the folks in it. I dream Mohawk (finding myself in the town) sometimes, even though I read this book two maybe three years ago. I can't believe that no one else visiting this site has reviewed this book at this time, besides the reprint of the published review. But Russo is not well known and this is his first novel. I recommend this book to anyone who breathes air and is thankful that they are a small part in the midst of this great ongoing tragicomedy (life). Didn't change my life, but if you want to read someone who is NOT a hack, read Richard Russo. Funny, too. --Jeremy

I read Mohawk after reading Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool. It was essentially the same story, in the same setting, with the same characters. It felt like Mohawk was practice for his masterpiece.

Like the other books, Mohawk is a collection of very well drawn characters, all of them fatally flawed, living in a dying town. What's missing in Mohawk is a central focus. There are many characters that we care about, and many stories, but no one main character and storyline to focus on, so Mohawk seems to have no thread we can latch onto. And though it is full of trademark Russo irony, it is missing the lightheartedness of Empire Falls that relieves the core of darkness of his characters.

Nevertheless, the novel held me interested, and once I got into it, I couldn't put it down, finishing it in a single weekend at 2 AM on Sunday night. Though not Russo's best, it is still better than 95% of the other books out there and worth reading. But if you haven't read Russo's The Straight Man, I'd recommend reading that instead. Mohawk, Nobody's Fool and Empire Falls are all the same story, same characters. The Straight Man is a departure, almost a comedy of errors, and a fun book to read.

For one who was born there, inherited a sense of the craftsmanship history of the place, worked during the summer in a tannery while attending college and owned a glovemaking business in Gloversville, New York, I know of the places, times and people profiles Russo writes about in his novels beginning with Mohawk. Russo's deep understanding of the people in small mill town America is the thread that runs through each of his books---whether the story's town is in Upstate NY, PA or ME. The life stories of the people in small town America need to be told and Richard Russo does it best.

As always, Russo's characters are fantastic. The reality of the relationship between mother and daughter in this book is staggering. I couldn't believe how accurately Russo was able to display such a dysfunctional family - completed with separate points of view, excellent dialog and heart-wrenching sadness.
The story lacked a punch that Russo's other books have - mostly Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool, and some others.
The end of the book was a bit slow and it could have ended about 25 pages sooner than it did, but it was nonetheless very good.
If you haven't read Russo before, don't start with this. But, if you're a fan, you'll enjoy it, if for no other reason, the characters and relationships between them are great.

Well, here goes ... I am an educated man, vis a vis the arts. Humbly, I am able to deconstruct Hyden, Mozart, Bach. I have studied art (and am, again, humbly, a craftsman myself) to be able to understand the brushwork, composition, and lighting of Monet, Hopper, Inness. But I'll be damned if I can begin to comprehend how a genius novelist is able to do what he does. Richard Russo is in the company of John Steinbeck, Wallace Stegner, Charles Dickens. Geez, I've FINALLY gotten around to reading "Mohawk", after marvelling at "Nobody's Fool" and "The Risk Pool". Folks: here is the greatest living American author. I'm gonna blanch at all this when I sober up, but here it is: do yourself a BIG favor, read Richard Russo.

Original writing that will probably have the reader going back for more. Heard about Russo from some people for whom the written word is life. They read him. I decided to see what was between the covers. He develops relationships, mother/daughter;daughter/father;husband/wife; friend/enemy; that help you understand characters who could easily be part of your everyday scenery. Russo provides some unexpected perspective to his characters that keeps the reader intrigued. This was my second Russo book, and I think I'm going back for thirds. Mohawk is a novel, not a sceen play. While there are some twists, it is not quite as funny and endearing as Straight Man, but if you are a person who enjoys solid writing, intriguing, everyday characters and a new perspective, you should enjoy Richard Russo and MOHWAK.

I picked up this book years ago (before the "Empire Falls" hype), not knowing what I was in for. Had I known that the book was about the happenings in a small town, I'd never had bought the book, and would have missed out on one of my favorite authors!

I was engrossed in this book from the first page. Enough so to move through the "works of Russo".

This very readable first novel is a great place for the Russo novice to start. If you've already read Russo's "Empire Falls", "Mohawk" may seem to be a "pilot" episode of that novel. We get a city home to a dying industry, polluted waterways as a result of that industry, the disenfranchised workers and a diner. It's probably a little unfair to make so many comparisons between the novels; Russo is a chronicler of the darker side of America, especially the towns that once were full of people who were able to make a living. We need Russo much like we need Annie Proulx; in a go-go era of skyrocketing real estate and money everywhere, the wealth in this country is not equally distributed and those towns you pass by on the highways all have stories of their own, stories that people would like to forget about. Russo brings these stories into focus and makes them impossible to avoid. (I'm half joking when I say Russo's next novel should be about people forced to leave an apartment building they'd lived in for decades once it goes "luxury" condo.)

Russo sets the two parts of "Mohawk" in 1966 and 1972 but doesn't play up the era too much except for a few scattered references and the appearance of a draft dodger. The lives of the characters are so real and well portrayed that it's hard to not keep turning pages, long after you should be asleep. Russo never offers the easy answer to any of his character's lives. There is no deux ex machina that exists around the corner, just more day-to-day living. In Russo's novel, people die when they shouldn't and others live far too long; there's no explanation why this is and looking for an answer can prove fruitless.

I enjoyed the novel as a whole, and it's a little hard to critique Russo's style here as he tightened up his writing and later novels like "Nobody's Fool" and "Empire Falls" are some of the best novels published in the last fifteen years, but I do have a minor quibble. "Mohawk" suffers at times from too many chapters that are self-contained; the book works well when the story flows but stumbles when it seems as though we're just reading a series of interconnected short stories. Read "Mohawk" and then move on to the rest of Russo's canon and see how a great writer develops his craft.