The Risk Pool

If Russo's books possessed only their big-hearted, endlessly revisitable characters, that would be enough. That they also possess belting story lines about broken families, comically recalcitrant pensioners, small-town decay and the indelibility of roots sometimes seems like an act of unparalleled literary generosity

Sunday Times

Charms readers with its humour and refreshes with it's vast, Dickensian cast of characters

Guardian

No one writing today catches the detail of life with such stunning accuracy

Annie Proulx

Perhaps if it was pointed out that here was a US writer who stood somewhere between Anne Tyler at her darkest and Russell Banks, with an occasional hint of Richard Ford at his least bleak, perhaps Russo would become as widely read as he deserves to be

Irish Times

Russo proves himself a master at evoking the sights, feelings and smells of a town... Superbly original and maliciously funny

New York Times Book Review