Bridge of Sighs (2007) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Sarah Berg: Wife of Lucy/ Lou. Artist.
• Noonan: Robert Noonan, aka Bobbie Marconi. Schoolfriend of Lucy/ Lou. Becomes artist.
• Bobby Marconi: Same person as Noonan
• Lucy: Main character. Positive, optimistic, gullable, thrustworthy and always nice.
• Big Lou: Father of Lucy. Same character, same looks.
• Louie: You have to love Lulu!
• Karen Cirillo: Add a description of this character.
• Perry Kozlowski
• Hugh
• Gabriel Mock
• Kayla
• Owen
• Ikey Lubin: Loved that place
• Jerzy Quinn
• Tessa
• Lou Lynch
• Nancy Salvatore
• Miss Rosa
• Buddy Nurt
• Harold Sundry
• David
• Mrs. Lynch
• Lichtner
• Brindy
• Maxine
• Evangeline
• Anne
• Willie
• Murdick
• Whitcombe Park

Quotes edit see section history

• “I've always known that there's more going on inside me than finds it way into the world, but this is probably true of everyone.”

• “Odd, how our view of human destiny changes over the course of a lifetime. In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice. We stand before a hundred doors, chose to enter one, where we're faced with a hundred more and then choose again. We choose not just what we'll do, but who we'll be. Perhaps the sound of all those doors swinging shut behind us each time we select this one or that one should trouble us, but it doesn't Nor does the fact that the doors often are identical and even lead in some cases to the exact same place. Occasionally a door is locked, but no matter, since so many other remain available. The distinct possibility that choice itself may be an illusion is something we disregard, because we're curious to know what' behind that next door, the one we hope will lead us to the heart of the mystery.”

• “To see a life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama's enemy.”

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• ODD, HOW OUR VIEW of human destiny changes over the course of a lifetime. In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice.

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• Can it be that what provides for us is the very thing that poisons us? Who hasn’t considered this terrible possibility?

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• To see a life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama’s enemy. Or so it sometimes seems to me, Louis Charles Lynch. The man I’ve become, the life I’ve lived, what are these but dominoes that fall not as I would have them but simply as they must?

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• Don’t even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn’t this why we can’t help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven’t been?

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• Passion and independence, she seemed to be saying, were all fine and good, but ultimately not sustainable. In the end it came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise. Hadn’t Sarah known this all along? Suddenly she understood the question she’d really been trying to ask all summer. Which was more important: to love or be loved?

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• I’ve always wanted to be the person he believed me to be, which at times has kept me from being a better one. A terrible realization, this.

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• Bobby alone, it seems to me, invented both a life and a self to live it.

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• The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we’re left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up. Blame love.

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• The loss of a place isn’t really so different from the loss of a person. Both disappear without permission, leaving the self diminished, in need of testimony and evidence. This happened. I was there. Once upon a time there was a footbridge. My father stood just there. This story I’ve been composing so faithfully, now I think about it, probably is little more than my poor attempt to restore what was and is no more. Is this why Bobby paints? To leave his paintings as evidence?

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• was a pederast? Gathering

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Thomaston
• New York
• Albany
• Venice
• America
• St. Francis
• Italy
• West Enders
• East Enders
• Nell
• Long Island
• Columbia
• Europe
• Hudson Street
• Hall
• Fulton
• Atlanta
• Vietnam
• Berman Court
• Cayoga
• Spinnarkles
• Newberry
• Schenectady
• Titian
• South Shore

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Richard Russo (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3568.U812B75
• Dewey: 813.54

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

More Books Like This edit see section history