SOURCE: Deignan, Tom. “Good Liars.” World and I 17, no. 11 (November 2002): 229.

In the following review, Deignan presents a critical reading of the stories in The Whore's Child and Other Stories, commending Russo's emphasis on examining the “act of storytelling.”

Literary whippersnappers such as David Foster Wallace and Rick Moody spent the 1990s tinkering with the literary form to great acclaim. It seemed that when you opened any hip collection of stories, or the latest, greatest postmodern novel, you were as likely to see footnotes or characters who shared the author's name as you were to see dialogue and plot twists. Whether or not these formal developments were a passing fad remains to be seen. But what can be said is that, lately, more established mainstream writers have picked up the postmodern scent in the literary air.

Mind you, writers such as Ian McEwan in his acclaimed novel Atonement or...