Book Notices | The Risk Pool by Richard Russo

Richard Russo, The Risk Pool

Amazon   One of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation is "The Inner Light," the one where Captain Picard is probed by an energy beam and left unconscious on the bridge. In the few minutes that pass in real time, Picard lives a lifetime on an alien planet. He has a wife and children. He conducts experiments. He plays the flute. He grows old. And eventually he's yanked out of that reality and back into consciousness on the Enterprise. The episode isn't action-packed, but it is powerful. Picard is thoroughly immersed in the life of this man from another world. The experience is deeply real for him, and it remains with him when he returns to his own life. Anyway, I was thinking of this as I was reading The Risk Pool, another story that is far from action-packed. We watch as Ned Hall grows up in the small town of Mohawk, New York, where fathers routinely abandon their families for barstools when they don't leave the state entirely. Ned's mother is forever teetering on the edge of a breakdown. His father, Sam Hall, is absent until he's not, and then he's not the best influence. The book is about fathers and sons and loving one's parents despite everything and wanting but not wanting to escape them. I don't know. Someone could write an English paper or two on what the book is about. It's a long read and a slow one, but if you have the patience for it, it will immerse you in another, wholly real world that you will be sad to leave when eventually you return to consciousness.