Read Dickens again

Richard Russo escaped the PhD. His Straight Man pokes fun at academe’s efficiencies, pettiness, gossip. We glimpse the psyche of professorate in a small-town university in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. As with Nobody’s Fool, the setting leads to a familiar sociability, routine friendships - and drinking, especially among men. But in this novel, individual decisions matter and we are pulled into the fraught consequences of choices avoided.