She Treads Softly: The Whore's Child: Stories

Thursday, November 12, 2026

The Whore's Child: Stories

The Whore's Child: Stories by Richard Russo
12/18/2007; 240 pages
Knopf Doubleday

The Whore's Child: Stories by Richard Russo is an excellent, very highly recommended collection of seven short stories.

Even within the constraints of an abbreviated short story, all of the selections feature Russo's masterful ability to portray characters as complicated, realistic individuals with both strengths and weaknesses, along with his keen insight into human nature. This collection serves to highlight Russo's incredible talent and ability to write. All of these stories could easily have been the beginning of a great novel.

Stories:
The Whore’s Child: Sister Ursala attends a fiction writing class and writes her memoir.
Monhegan Light: Martin travels to the island where his deceased wife vacationed every year.
The Farther You Go: A man and his wife deal with a family problem together.
Joy Ride: A mother and son leave their home and travel cross country.
Buoyancy: Retired Professor Paul Snow and his wife June stay on an island they last visited 30 years ago.
Poison: Old friends recall the poisoning of the land where they grew up.
The Mysteries of Linwood Hart: This story is broken into smaller subtitles and features the thoughts, activities, and musings of Lin as he plays baseball while experiencing family issues.

The Whore's Child is a perfect choice for everyone who enjoys well-written short stories. (Continuing my short break between advanced readers copies and working my way through my TBR stacks from years past.)

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.