Straight Man by Richard Russo Next Book Club Selection – Please note change in date and location
Posted by admin on Oct 30, 2006
Hope you can join us at the next meeting of the library brown bag book
club. We will be in the Barrister’s Club, Tuesday,
Dec. 12th from noon to 1 p.m.
The book we will be reading is STRAIGHT MAN by RICHARD RUSSO.
Summary from Library Journal:
Hank Devereaux Jr. is the kind of guy who turns anything serious
into a joke. Pushing 50, he’s the interim chair of a squabbling English
department at a small rural college. Big budget cuts are rumored. Each
department chair has been told to provide a list of those who will lose
their jobs. His department believes that Hank has prepared such a list,
but he hasn’t and won’t. Instead, he goes on television and
spontaneously jokes that he will kill the campus geese until the
administration gives him his budget. When a goose really is killed,
Hank becomes the prime suspect. In his earlier novels (e.g., Nobody’s
Fool, LJ 4/15/93), Russo captured with compassion and humor the lives
of the people in small backwater towns; now he does the same for those
who inhabit the groves of academe. This novel is filled with laughter
but also much seriousness. Give it a straight A.