Nobody's Fool

Richard Russo invites us back to cozy North Bath—now so familiar it feels like home. “Fools All” is the second novel in the trilogy about a small American town where everyone knows everyone else, can barely tolerate it, but will never abandon you when trouble comes.

With his characteristic humor, the author tells the story of a life where everything is ridiculous, accidental, and painfully touching. About people for whom simplicity isn’t a weakness, but a way to survive. And about a town where you’re expected—whether you’re sure you want to return or not.

In the time since the events of the first book, Sally has suddenly been lucky. But Sally has always understood that luck and fortune are fleeting, and now he’s reading the cardiologist’s conclusion according to which he has—at best—two years, and more likely only one. This fact doesn’t bother him that much; what worries him far more is how he will tell the people who form the core of his troublemaking life: his longtime married lover Ruth; Rub, his faithful simpleton friend who still wonders whether he can truly be called Sally’s best friend; and the son and grandson who, for most of Sally’s life, have considered him a kind of absent figure—how will he tell them?

And there’s also Carl Robak, who continues to nurse grandiose projects, and the police chief Douglas Raymer, whose wife—fleeing with a mysterious lover—literally managed to reach only the last step of the staircase; and all the other residents of North Bath, who have problems no fewer than fallen leaves in an autumn forest… And the whole town probably won’t cope without Sally—and especially when the town’s main local villain returns from somewhere not too far away…

Listen to the continuation of the story of your favorite North Bath, where it seems like nothing happens… except, of course, everything—through the performance of the charismatic Grigory Perel.

Press on the book:

“American writer Richard Russo pulls off a remarkable trick, novel after novel: without any extra sentimentality or drama, he falls in love with readers by making them care about the unremarkable residents of sleepy little towns where, at first glance, nothing seems to happen. And he turns everyday small things and conversations into a truly epochal work,” — Natalya Lomyakina

“Taken together, ‘Fools No More’ and ‘Fools All’—in total more than a thousand pages—represent a grand achievement. The author created a world as vivid and detailed as the one we live in every day. North Bath exists, Sally exists—and so does Hattie’s café, the White Horse tavern, and Miss Piplz’s house on Main Street—everything is real. And I just hope we’re meeting them not for the last time,” — The New York Times