SOURCE: Wolitzer, Hilma. “Richard Russo's Tale of a Reckless Father and a Sensitive Son.” Chicago Tribune Books (30 October 1988): 1.

In the following review, Wolitzer compliments Russo's “remarkable fix on blue-collar life in small-town America” in The Risk Pool but criticizes the novel for underdeveloped female characters.

As he clearly demonstrated in Mohawk, his fine first novel, Richard Russo has a remarkable fix on blue-collar life in small-town America. His second novel also takes place in fictive Mohawk, in upstate New York, and has some of the same peripheral characters. Once again, Russo brilliantly evokes the economic and emotional depression of a failing town, a place where even the weather is debilitating and the inhabitants seem to struggle merely to stay in place. Although The Risk Pool is not as intricately plotted as Mohawk, it is a far more ambitious work, with a Dickensian sprawl and charm.

The narrative is...