Trajectory by Richard Russo

Monday, January 22 through Friday, February 16. Read by Norman Gilliland.

A new collection of short fiction that demonstrates that Richard Russo–winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls–is also a master of this genre. Russo’s characters in these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we’re familiar with from many of his novels. In “Horseman,” a professor confronts a young plagiarist. In “Intervention,” a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father’s shadow while he presses forward–or not. In “Voice,” a semiretired academic is conned by his increasingly estranged brother into coming along on a group tour of the Venice Biennale. And in “Milton and Marcus,” a lapsed novelist struggles with his wife’s illness and tries to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he’s called to an aging, iconic star’s mountaintop retreat in Wyoming.

(Knopf; ISBN-10: 1101947721)

Theme: “Skating in Central Park” by Bill Evans and Jim Hall (Blue Note CDP 7 90583 2)