No surprise, Philip Larkin’s famous quote about families — “they fuck you up” — winds up in the book. But this feels too glib, too unequivocal a summation of the portrait Russo paints of familial legacies. A more appropriate one might be the Hawthorne quote Billy Costigan spits at Captain Queenan in Martin Scorsese’s TheDeparted: “Families are always rising and falling in America.” True, indeed. And seldom are the emotional echoes of this tidal shift painted as well as they are here.
RICHARD RUSSO | Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St, Brookline | October 4 at 6 pm | $5 | 617.566.6660
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