Richard Russo Critical Essay | Critical Review by David Montrose

Critical Review by David Montrose

SOURCE: Montrose, David. “Fightin' an' Feudin'.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4379 (6 March 1987): 246.

In the following excerpt, Montrose praises Russo's structure and characterization in Mohawk, but faults the novel for elements of melodrama and excessive length.

Small-town USA (North-eastern variety) is the milieu for each of these first novels. Richard Russo's Mohawk is a declining leather town in upstate New York, Cathie Pelletier's Mattagash a lumber town whose rusticity and isolation are exceptional even by the standards of backwoods Maine. The similarities do not end there. Both novels are preoccupied with ties of blood and emotion. They share, too, a structure which intersperses the central plot with scenes from their characters' personal histories.

Set in 1967, the opening section of Mohawk revolves around the mysterious bond between two antithetical old men: upright Mather Grouse, a retired leather-cutter in precarious health, and Rory Gaffney, a detested one-time workmate who...
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