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"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning Richard Russo--in his first stand-alone novel in a decade--comes a new revelation: a gripping story about the abiding yet complex power of friendship. One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year old men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college circa the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today--Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-four years later, as this new weekend unfolds, three lives and that of a significant other are displayed in their entirety while the distant past confounds the present like a relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are. also introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as constricting and rewarding as those of family or any other community. For both longtime fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are. is a stunning demonstration of a highly acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable achievement"--… (more)
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Three older men (in their 60’s) converge in Chilmark, a small village on Martha’s Vineyard, for a reminiscence of sorts. The house has been in Lincoln’s family for decades. And though Lincoln and his family rarely visit, the house holds memories that
Lincoln, Teddy and Mickey, from different parts of the country and from very different backgrounds, meet at Minerva, a private liberal arts college in New England, in the 1960’s. They are scholarship students and meet as ‘hashers’ or kitchen workers in a swanky sorority house on campus. Lincoln, Teddy and Mickey become life-long friends and soulmates, along with Jacy Calloway, a member of the sorority and a young woman they are all helplessly in love with.
After their 1971 graduation, they all meet at the Chilmark House for a goodbye weekend. That weekend will haunt them for the rest of their adult lives, as they try to untangle the mystery of Jacy’s disappearance from their lives, and the emotional backlash that it brings.
Being of a ‘certain age’, this book speaks to me in a profound way. There are so many events, so many occurrences, so many entanglements that demand a sense of closure in my head. I understand instantly and completely the three friends’ emotional states. Secrets that need to be told; behaviors that need to be explained; friendships that need to be redefined.
CHANCES ARE is humorous at times, very thoughtful, emotional, surprising; a treatise on coming of age and coming to a comfortable place in ‘older age’; the complexities of deep friendship.
I would heartily recommend this book. Thank you Mr. Russo.
On 1st December 1969, midway through their college years, they spent the evening glued to a small black and white television in the sorority house, anxiously watching the first draft lottery. That was the evening the fates of approximately 850,000 young men would be decided, dependent on when their date of birth, contained in one of 366 capsules, would be drawn. Everyone wanted as high a number as possible because that would mean a low risk of being called up to serve in Vietnam but a low number meant an early call-up … or making the decision to avoiding that fate by fleeing to Canada. Although two of the young men are lucky enough to get a high enough number to make call-up unlikely, the third gets a very low one so he and his friends know that, as soon as he graduates, he is certain to be called up.
When they finally graduate in 1971 the three friends and Jacy, who is shortly due to get married, decide to spend the Memorial Day long-weekend together on Martha’s Vineyard, at the holiday house owned by Lincoln’s mother. They all enjoy this farewell weekend despite the tension generated by the knowledge that one of the three men will shortly be called up and that Jacy’s wedding was imminent. However, following that weekend Jacy was never seen again and nor was the mystery of her disappearance ever solved. Had one of the three killed her because he was about to lose her to another man? Had a disagreeable neighbour, whose advances she’d rejected, killed her? Or had she hitch-hiked when she left the island and been picked up by a murderer?
Fast-forward to 2015: all three men are sixty-six years old and had last got together ten years earlier. Their disparate personalities are reflected in the many ways in which their lives have taken very different paths:
one of them is a happily married family man who owns a commercial real estate business; another is a bachelor, a complex, introverted man who is a small-firm publisher and struggles with his mental health, and the third is rock musician who rides a motorbike and whose temper has a short fuse. As Lincoln is considering selling the holiday house he inherited when his mother died, the friends agree to meet there for a reunion. It very quickly becomes clear that in the intervening years each of them has remained obsessed with Jacy, and has puzzled over her disappearance. When they reflect on that long-lost weekend they realise that they need to solve the mystery of what happened to the girl none of them has ever stopped loving ... but what secrets and suspicions does each man hold, and will whatever they gradually share make them question how well they truly know one another?
As the timeline moves between past and present and with alternating chapters using the narrative voices of Lincoln and Teddy, a picture gradually emerges of all their backgrounds, the various experiences which have influenced the ways in which they’ve lived their lives, shaped their decision-making, forged their enduring friendship and made them the men they are today. Although Mickey’s narrative voice isn’t heard until two thirds of the way through the book, his story is told through the reminiscences of Lincoln and Teddy, meaning that he is always as “present” in the developing story as they are. Each of the characters feels that the direction his life took after graduating was, in any ways, predicated by the result of the draft lottery and I found their various reflections on this to be very thought-provoking, partly because philosophising on life-choices, on pivotal moments and “roads not taken” during our lives is a tempting self-indulgence for most of us.
Almost immediately I felt completely caught up in the lives of these characters as they struggled to be open with one another, as they faced up to their regrets and remorse, their guilt and their shame, their reflections on how contented, or otherwise, they are with the decisions they have made and the people they have become, as well as with their hopes and expectations for the future. The mystery of what happened to Jacy was a central theme and I felt that the author managed the tension and suspense generated by this in a tightly-controlled way and although I found that the final resolution did require a degree of incredulity, this didn’t detract from my overall satisfaction with the outcome! In addition to creating such credible characters, the author conveyed an impressive sense of time and place, particularly with his evocations of the early 1970s, the influence of the Vietnam war, the music, the drug-culture and the massive social and political changes which were taking place at that time.
This is an elegantly-written, powerful and memorable story, embracing many thought-provoking themes, particularly ones about masculinity, the nature of male friendships, the power of unrequited love, the complexities of family relationships, especially those between fathers and sons, an insidious working-class insecurity which harbours self-doubt, the reverberating effects of the choices people make at various times in their lives, reflections on fate versus freewill and the challenges of aging.
This is the first novel I’ve read by this author but, if Richard Russo’s acute observations of people and their milieu, the essential humanity he brings to his characters, his wry sense of humour and his ironic reflections on life are trademarks of his writing style, I’m sure that I’ll now enjoy working my way through his backlist!
One final reflection … when Mickey invites Lincoln to stay with him after the weekend he offers him the use of his pull-out sofa saying, “the dog won’t like it, but his affection and forgiveness can usually be bought with chocolate.” Would the author please tell Mickey to find another treat for his dog because chocolate can be dangerous, possibly even lethal, for dogs!
I kept trying to put my finger on what I didn’t like about this book. I think in the end it was the fact that
Russo is an excellent writer, one I’ve always loved, and the book is full of beautiful descriptions, but the characters felt empty to me. The most important fact of their lives was that they had once loved a woman in college who had disappeared. It felt like a weak ode to The Sun Also Rises and I wasn’t a big fan.
It’s September, and most of the tourists and summer residents have finally packed up and left Martha’s Vineyard for another year. But three sixty-six-year-old men, friends since they first met as college freshmen, have decided to spend a weekend on the island catching up and reminiscing about the experiences they shared in the crazy 1960s. The men are still close friends but have not been together for ten years, so there is a lot to talk about. The real question is how willing they are to share some of the secrets they’ve been hiding from each other.
Lincoln is now a commercial real estate broker in Las Vegas where he lives with his wife, the mother of his six children. As he tells it, he is financially comfortable now, but he was a much richer man in 2008 before the crash. Consequently, Lincoln is under some pressure to sell the Martha’s Vineyard property he inherited from his mother. Teddy is an academic who runs a tiny press for a university in Syracuse and has discovered that he is very good at fixing things – especially broken books. Mickey, who lives in nearby Cape Cod, is a musician who fronts a regionally-popular band and enjoys much the same lifestyle that he has lived since he was in his twenties. Of the three men, he is the one who seems to have changed the least since they went to school together in Connecticut.
However, there is someone missing from this reunion, and all three men feel her absence deep down inside themselves. Jacy was the sorority girl they were all in love with, each of them secretly hoping that he would be the one Jacy chose to spend the rest of her life with – despite how guilty they still feel about having been so willing to betray the trust and friendship of the other two Musketeers if that’s what it took to win Jacy’s love. But then, in 1971 during their last weekend together, Jacy disappeared from the island, never to be heard from again, and that kind of betrayal became unnecessary.
What, though, happened to Jacy? Her disappearance was never solved, and when Lincoln starts asking questions about that weekend, disturbing answers begin to surface.
Chances Are, despite the unsolved mystery it centers itself around, is not really a mystery novel. Rather, it is a literary novel that depends on its exceptionally well-developed characters to keep its readers turning pages. Russo proves himself to be such a master of misdirection here that his readers are certain to be fascinated as the author subtly reveals one clue after the other about who Lincoln, Teddy, Mickey, and Jacy are and how they became those people. And, too, this one has one of the most satisfying and well-written endings that I’ve read so far this year. Chances Are is one I’ll be recommending to my friends for years to come.
In his latest novel, we have three sixty-six year old men--Teddy, Lincoln, and Mickey--who get together in a family cottage on Martha’s Vineyard, to ponder where they’ve gone in their lives (commercial real estate in Las Vegas, rock musician, and a small-press publisher and want-to-be writer) after attending the same small college back in the 1970s. They always kidded themselves about being comrades, like the Three Musketeers. All three worked at a sorority, and all three were in love with the same free-spirited hippie girl, Jacy.
Russo has written a book that’s as close to a mystery as he’s ever gotten. So much of the book revolves around these men thinking back forty years, to the last time they gathered at this same cottage, with Jacy, in 1971. That was the last time they saw her, before she completely disappeared. Their fascination and longing for this beautiful young woman from their youth, is the center of many of their thoughts, fantasies, and conversations during their island reunion. They go so far as to get the local newspaper and the island’s former chief of police checking into Jacy’s disappearance. The focus of suspicion includes both island residents, and our three main characters. The mystery of her disappearance is revealed in a sad story from an unsuspected source.
The sensitive writing reveals how these three men have dealt with their longings for this young woman who has often filled their heads over those many years. When the truth is finally revealed to them, these three men in their sixties have to come to grips with their part in the story, as well as what it means to lose the mystery and any future possibilities with Jacy, and what the truth means to them and their relationship with each other.
I found this a very satisfying book, as I found myself feeling a certain kinship with these very different men. Amusing, entertaining, heart-felt, surprising, and being left feeling very close to the story’s characters—what more can a book be expected to deliver? This is one of the best books by one of my favorite writers.
Each man comes to Martha's Vineyard with baggage. The most significant moment of their young lives was December 1, 1969: the night the Vietnam draft lottery was broadcast on national television. Mickey, with the lowest number, ultimately went to Canada to avoid military service; Teddy spent his life in academia but never found a clear sense of purpose; Lincoln was never at risk of going to Vietnam but is haunted by his father’s dogmatic presence and a sense of failure despite all outward appearances. The novel explores the turns their lives took after the lottery and the men they have become, while also slowly revealing Jacy’s story.
I most enjoyed the character studies in this novel, as well as Russo’s references to modern politics (the weekend reunion takes place in 2015). The mystery of Jacy’s disappearance was sometimes too dominant, and its resolution a little too pat but then this is supposed to be a novel about male friendships, not a “whodunnit.” It’s not a bad book, but it’s not Russo’s best either.
As the novel turns a bit into a detective story, family secrets and rekindled animosities take over the narrative and maybe stray away from what Russo does best, but in all this is a pleasant read. The novel has a Big Chill feel to it.
Some lines:
The solid earth beneath his feet had turned to sand, and his parents, the two most familiar people in his life, into strangers. In time he would regain his footing, but he would never again entirely trust it.
By sixteen, sneaking into raunchy New Haven bars and sitting in with older guys whose girlfriends didn’t wear bras and seemed to enjoy revealing this fact by bending over in front of Mickey, who would later joke with Lincoln and Teddy that he had a hard-on for all of 1965.
Maybe this was the unstated purpose of education, to get young people to see the world through the tired eyes of age: disappointment and exhaustion and defeat masquerading as wisdom.
What made the contest between fate and free will so lopsided was that human beings invariably mistook one for the other, hurling themselves furiously against that which is fixed and immutable while ignoring the very things over which they actually had some control.
NYT
The suspense may carry you through the first half of the novel, but what works better is Russo’s depiction of his central characters, with their father issues and insecurities about class and money, their ingrained cluelessness about women and their need to present a certain image to the world, even if they’re pretty sure the world couldn’t care less.
Chances Are…” is, at heart, less a mystery than an evocation of what happens when you subscribe to “the peculiarly male conviction that silence conveyed one’s feelings better than anything else.” When Lincoln, Teddy and Mickey are finally forced to speak about those feelings, they discover that “the membrane separating sympathy from pity could be paper thin.” Is it possible the weekend will be, as Teddy wonders, “a misguided attempt to preserve something already lost”?
Quotes: "The thing to understand about your father is that you always have a choice. You can do things his way, or you can wish you had."
"What's interesting is that people aren't more curious about each other. We let people keep their secrets but then convince ourselves we know them anyway."
"What made the contrast between fate and free will so lopsided was that human beings invariably mistook one for the other, hurling themselves furiously against that which is fixed and immutable while ignoring the very things over which they had some control."
Three men in their 60's reunite for a weekend on Martha's Vineyard. They met
This book was such a pleasure to read. Maybe it was because I could completely relate to the whole process of reflecting back on who we were during our college years and look at where life has taken us. The plot had a few twists and there were times when it almost felt like this was a mystery. Overall a quiet and reflective story told with humor and sadness.
Really took to heart the last several pages.
Richard
The story is mostly told through Lincoln and Teddy's POVs with lots of flashbacks to their youth, both before college and then their college years where they all met as the scholarship students at an elite New England college. Being about the same age, I found it a trip down memory lane as Mr. Russo details the draft lottery, college parties, and other experiences. He does a great job in describing how those experiences built the men they are today. They were all in love with Jacy, and their reunion brings many of those memories back. Yet they address her disappearance in different ways.
It's lovely writing and a thoroughly enjoyable story about growing older and becoming comfortable with oneself.