Chances Are....

There is a pitch-perfect scene early on in Richard Russo's uneven new novel "Chances Are..." that spoke to me so clearly. I remember that night in the living room at Russell Sage College as if it were yesterday. It's the evening in 1969 when, for the first time, a lottery drawing based on birthdays will determine which young men will be upending their lives and heading to Southeast Asia and which will be free to continue their studies and get on with their lives. 

Mickey, Lincoln, and Teddy work in the kitchen at a sorority house on the campus of their alma mater, Minerva College in Connecticut. Their reactions to the results are so honest and true that you know immediately that Russo lived through this himself. In fact, he said in an interview that he gave Teddy his own number, 322. Call it a get out of jail free card. Mickey was not so lucky.

Fast forward forty years. The guys are reuniting at the home in Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard that's been in Lincoln's family for generations. Though they considered themselves pretty tight - all for one and one for all was their perpetual chant - they haven't been in close touch over the years and the only thing that they really have in common is their mutual love for the fourth member of their posse, Jacy Calloway. 

She was the girl who got away. Jacy was from a different social class, the only one of the four at Minerva who wasn't on scholarship, yet for some unexplained reason she gravitated to these guys and they took pains to treat her like one of the boys. But that all changed on the weekend after graduation when the four friends gathered at the house in Chilmark for a final booze and pot-filled bash before they scattered for jobs, marriage, and for Mickey, the recruitment center.

Then Jacy Calloway disappeared. Russo would have us believe that her vanishing from their lives left a void, a mystery that could never be solved, yet forty years have elapsed before the friends decide to talk about it. Something sinister is implied but with little evidence. As readers we begin to question the truthfulness of each of the guys and wonder what really brought them together for this reunion. The plot seems suddenly contrived.

Russo is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, one whose books are beloved by millions, myself included. In previous novels like "Empire Falls" or "Nobody's Fool" his characterizations were so generous, so thoughtful, that I kept waiting for my heart to open to Mickey, Lincoln, and Teddy. When that didn't happen, I began to wonder what it was about Jacy that had them so enthralled. Then I realized that there was nothing. She was just a cipher upon whom they had each imprinted their own hopes and dreams.  She was their unattainable illusion. 

Maybe that's the point. The road not taken. Chances are.....Man plans, god laughs. As a contemporary of Russo's I understand the need that some have to reflect on past choices and ponder what might have been. But why not rejoice in the life we have now? That's my preference and perhaps that's why I found Russo's book a tad self-indulgent and disappointing. Don't get me wrong. It will hold your interest. It's a worthy beach read but it lacks the depth of "Bridge of Sighs" or the sharp humor of "Straight Man." Let me know what you think. Have I missed something?