The author of the well-received first novel Mohawk (1986), a long
soap opera set in a decaying mill town in upstate New York, here
returns to that setting with a father-son drama that spans several
decades. With an unerring sense of place, the book transcends some
soapiness of its own and breathes life into its small-town types.
Ned Hall tells the story of his father Sam, who is at the very
bottom of the autoinsurance risk pool; of his mother Jenny, who
breaks down after her lover, a priest, leaves her at the communion
rail; and of the assorted citizens of Mohawk, ranging from suicidal
adolescents and battered drunks to well-to-do philanderers and a
solicitous attorney. Sam is the most memorable character, a classic
rogue and no-account who appears in his son's life at will until
Jenny breaks down. Ned moves in with his father and receives a
young man's classic education into street life in the 50's: he
learns how to play pool, how to bet the horses, how to steal and
lie - partly from malice and hurt, partly to please others. He
witnesses endless fights between his father and Drew, the son of
his father's girlfriend. He falls in love with the well-to-do girl
on the hill and returns, years later, to become her lover and his
father's buddy before leaving again. Drew gets killed, Jenny moves
to California with the solicitous lawyer, and Sam gets cancer.
Though the book gets baggy with too many long-winded stories about
smalltown eccentrics and grotesques, its ending is a powerful
epiphany, if a bit forced: Ned's girl has a child at the same time
as Sam dies. The seasonal structure here comes full circle.
Self-consciously written as an old-fashioned novel, the book
creates a time and place with gusto and, by its end, manages to
move us. (Kirkus Reviews)
The Risk Pool is a thirty-year journey through the lives of Sam
Hall, a small-town gambling hellraiser, and his watchful,
introspective son Ned. When Ned's mother Jenny suffers a breakdown
and retreats from her husband's carelessness into a dream world,
Ned becomes part of his father's seedy nocturnal world, touring the
town's bars and pool halls, struggling to win Sam's affections
while avoiding his sins.
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