Nobody's Fool

A witty and touching novel by a Pulitzer Prize laureate, featuring Richard Russo’s unmistakable style—irony, humor, warmth, and humanity. Welcome to North Bath! A backwater town, but give it a chance and it will charm you, just like its ridiculous and lovable residents. Independent and stubborn Donald Sullivan—Sally knows the whole town. He’s sixty, and his life is a string of endless problems. Sally is divorced, his knees hurt, his boss is a smug cheat, his friends are such that you don’t even need enemies, and problems pour in one after another. All his life he relied only on himself, chose his own path—well, and if he ended up in a dead end, then he was the one to blame. But now his son has appeared too—someone Sally is almost unfamiliar with. Sally doesn’t want his son to repeat his own unfortunate fate of a complete loser. “There Are No Fools” is the first book in the North Bath trilogy, a true encyclopedia of life in American backwaters. It’s a story about how stupidity committed with sincerity can sometimes be nobler—and more valuable for the heart—than even the wisest, most rational action. The film adaptation, based on the novel, gathered a stellar cast: Paul Newman, Jessica Tandy, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and others. In the audio version, the nuances of the master’s signature American prose style were finely conveyed by actor Aleksei Bagdasarov.