SOURCE: Kaveney, Roz. “Bonds Men.” New Statesman and Society 6, no. 263 (30 July 1993): 39-40.

In the following review, Kaveney commends Russo's “ear for social ritual and the comedy that goes with it” in Nobody's Fool but laments the novel's occasionally stereotypical characterizations.

Early in this likeable, if blokeish, novel of American small-town life, [Nobody's Fool,] crippled reprobate Sully fails to recognise the source of the quotation (“We wear the chains we forge in life”) of which his former English teacher—Miss Beryl, now his landlady—is so fond. Since Russo makes a point of highlighting it at the beginning and end of the novel, we should pay attention. The alert reader may recognise it as coming from A Christmas Carol; since Russo's novel runs from Thanksgiving to New Year, we may take it that what is enacted here is as much a fairy-tale of redemption as dirty realism.

Russo is...