When the novel opens, he has been married to the love of his life, Sarah Berg, for 40 years. They run a family business — an "empire" of convenience stores , originally known as Ikey Lubin's, which is a character in itself, and a hangout. And their only son, Owen, seems poised to keep it going.

They're also planning a trip to Italy, because their oldest friend, a renowned painter named Bobby Marconi, lives there. The thought of this trip is nerve-wracking to Lou because he knows that Bobby also loved Sarah — and maybe she still loves him.

Russo employs his creative genius skillfully as he tells this story with the help of flashbacks and different voices. All the characters struggle with problems from their youth. And it is jarring to find that Lou's version of events differs so much from those of Sarah and Bobby. It is in every way a masterpiece of contradictions.

According to Russo, he started out with just a few characters, having written 300 pages before he knew there was a Sarah. And then he structured the story from a photo, "until it became a mural. It's a style of expansive storytelling" as new characters are invented, said Russo, "a habit of digressing. It runs against the culture of contemporary fiction, which is more spare than my books tend to be.

"If you love minimalism, you are in for more than you want with this book."

Russo does not write with the idea that readers will skip anything. "We're all tempted to skip. We like dialogue better than long passages of narration. If you can skip, you will. But with my books, you will learn that if you get off the reservation, you're going to be left without a map.

"That's how a storyteller hangs onto the reins. Even though my sentences are often long and even ornate, my editor agrees with me that nothing should be there that is not necessary to the story." It is relationships that move Russo's books, and he draws a tight circle around them.

In "The Bridge of Sighs," the other colorful characters — Lou's indomitable mother, Tessa; his father, Lou-Lou; his peculiar Uncle Dec; Gabriel Mock III, a young black student who is mercilessly beaten by a white student named Perry Kozlowski; Karen Cirillo, a slutty, voluptuous girl; Nan Beverly, the most popular girl in school; Mr. Berg, Sarah's dad, an eccentric English teacher who is writing his own novel; and Bobby's crazed father, who keeps his mother in a veritable prison and then has an affair.

"The great trick of every artist," said Russo, "is to make it look like he knew what he was doing all along. Hopefully, by the end, I can provide the reader with the illusion that I knew what I was doing. Or that the whole thing was inevitable."

---

E-mail: dennis@desnews.com