The Risk Pool, by Richard Russo

The Risk Pool was my first book by Richard Russo, but I've plowed through almost everything else since then. I got this book while I was living in Czechoslovakia, while there was such a thing, because there wasn't by the time I left, but while I was there, any fluent English speaker (and there were only about five in the whole town) would pass on to any other English speaker, any and all reading material, and so I lived in a small river of excellent fiction. I taught for a year there at the Vysoka Skola Dopravy a Spojov, in case you're ever in the neighbourhood, just after I got back from Africa and home wouldn't look the same anymore. This was the first book anyone lent me after I got there, and the lender was my roommate, Andrea from Vienna, whose inexplicable affection for Charles Bukowski did not spoil her palate for more flavourful characters. There are a few books so compelling that I've just turned them over once I finish and read the whole thing again, and this is one of those books. Part of the reason may be that reading and hearing English words was so refreshing in a place where I heard so little, but mostly, I just wasn't ready to let go of the people. I just liked them all so much, and it hurt me to have to lose touch like that, never find out how their lives worked out.  I miss them still.
Not sure I can let this one go.
Score +1 (1 book in, 0 out)