Chances Are
By Richard Russo 
Published by Alfred Knopf
Pages 302 Price $26.95

Richard Russo has created a new exciting novel that I like better than his famous “Empire Falls” book which won him the Pulitzer Prize in 2002.

This book is refreshing, humorous, and compassionate. It reveals the feelings of youth in the 1970’s in flashbacks with insight and humor into the human condition, while including comments on our society today. The book is so well written that it takes you away from the constant discussion in the news today about the tragic violence in America in Ohio and Texas. However, it does reveal every age has its struggles with anxiety concerning violence, the fear of war, and the search for love.

It is an amazing story written with many textures of wit, psychological understanding, and wisdom, focusing on human nature, chance, choices made, and destiny.

On a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, after the tourist season, three old friends agree to meet for a reunion.They are all 66 and  attended the same liberal arts college in their youth.They also belonged to the same fraternity. Now, accomplished in their  own fields, they can laugh at their mistakes in their youth, while their age gives them some wisdom to understand each other on a deeper level.They are all secretly interested in seeing how each has grown and how each has aged.

A fascinating study in contrasts and likenesses among the three men is interwoven with flashbacks of their youthful experiences compared to their present conditions both  psychological and physical at the age of 66.

They all belonged to the Theta Fraternity House at a fictional  school named Minerva College which could be any small college in America during the 1970’s. Their common humanity and adjustments are like many college students at that time. All were worried about the Vietnam draft and did not want to fight in the Vietnam war. The book reflects the thinking of young college students during that period. In college, they studied subjects required, searched for their identity and explored freedom. They were on scholarships and had part- time jobs at the college.They drank and enjoyed fraternity life as well as the girls at a local sorority house on campus.

Forty five years had elapsed from being college teenagers to the maturity of being adults in the present time when they agree to get together on Martha’s Vineyard as we see in the opening of the book. Lincoln is now a commercial real estate broker in Las Vegas. Teddy is a small press publisher in Syracuse. Mickey is now a well- known musician who lives in Cape Cod. Mickey sometimes resents outsiders, who merely visit the island and do not really live there. However, he is looking forward to the reunion with his friends.

Lincoln arrives first on the island and talks to a local real estate person about letting his family cottage finally go. He has mixed feelings but with six children he does not need a three bedroom house, yet he always loved it. He had not been living in it for years. He had been renting it out seasonally, but now he could use the money. He is an excellent businessman but has emotional ties to his family’s cottage on Martha’s Vineyard.

Teddy is an academic among the three friends. He is not interested in the world of business. He is more of a recluse but enjoys the company of “The Three Musketeers,” as they affectionately call themselves. All are looking forward to the reunion to catch up on their accomplishments and current illnesses. Teddy stayed in the academic world and taught at a fictional college named St. Joseph’s in Syracuse for many years as an adjunct faculty member. He never got married but developed a friendship with the woman president of the college, who loved his idea of opening a small publishing business, which he called Seven Story Books that she funded through grants from the college. He was happy to edit fledgling writers’ works and polish them up to help get them in print. Teddy did have an illness. He called the illness “spells.” Teddy recalls before a spell appeared, colors seem brighter, his equilibrium becomes off, and sometimes he gets premonitions about the future.

Mickey is a musician and has no boundaries. He likes to drink and sleep late, although he is up late for his rock concerts. He arrives on the island with his Harley Davidson motorcycle and guitar.

The Three Muskateers, as they called themselves, had in common a favorite girl, Jacy whom they watched carefully at Minerva College events, especially at her sorority and the fraternity gatherings. Each man loved her at a distance but did not date her.

Forty- five years ago Jacy, a girl they knew at Minerva College, joined this happy group on the island, even though she was engaged to another man. They were all in their late teens or early 20’s. Jacy was like a force of nature and did not have a moral compass. She believed in free love. While on the island, she had an enjoyable skinny dip in the ocean with Teddy. Jacy smothered him with kisses. He did not know what that meant. Had Jacy selected him to be her favorite among the three friends? She had been engaged to someone else, yet she said, “I think this means I might not be getting married after all.” Teddy will always remember her.

When the group left on the boat to the mainland after the weekend, they sang “Chances Are” by Johnny Mathis, a popular song of the day. This romantic melody was a favorite of the three men and defines the group with its attitude of spontaneous love during that period. Its message reflected you have to act on your immediate impulses concerning love and life and take chances. Teddy did not have an affair with Jacy during their skinny dipping adventure, and he always thought he had missed his “chance” at love with her. The philosophy in the book deals with many “chances” in life are based on the choices made, and taking  those chances will determine the direction of one’s life. That is the reason why the phrase, “Chances Are,” is the title of the book. The book also explores through the word “chances,”and its many connotations, the ideas of destiny, genetics, and fate.

After they had left the island that weekend of long ago, “The Martha Vineyard Gazette” and other papers advertised “Have you seen this girl?” No, Lincoln thought. Her name was Justine Calloway. He had only known her as Jacy. They were aware that neither of Jacy’s parents or her fiancé knew she was going off to Martha’s Vineyard with Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey. Lincoln was amazed that authorities did not question them. Authorities seemed to focus on Jacy’s fiancé.

At that time, Teddy had another of his chronic spells. What could have happened to Jacy after she left the island? Instead of taking the bus back home had she decided to hitchhike? Teddy began to feel that Jacy’s fate was not so much about her, as about himself. He felt lost. It had been a summer of losses. Lincoln went back to the West. Mickey went to Canada to avoid the Vietnam war, and Teddy checked into the Mass General Hospital with a panic attack.

My favorite character is Teddy. He is a fascinating figure in the book because he is a deep thinker and observer of all the other characters. He does not have the ambition that Lincoln has. He does not have the laid – back, lifestyle that Mickey has. He is a writer/editor and an introvert. However, he is the most sensitive, mysterious, and unpredictable character in the book along with Jacy, who is like the beautiful Sirens in Greek mythology who led sailors to become shipwrecked!

If you want to find out what happened to Jacy and if the three college friends had anything to do with her disappearance you will have to read the book.

Flashbacks in the book are poignant but can be confusing at times. So you will have to read carefully, but the humor, compassion, dialogue, psychological understanding of the major characters, and a picture of America over four decades, is worth another Pulitzer Prize! I recommend the book highly.

— Pat Davidson Reef is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston. She received her Masters Degree at the University of Southern Maine. She taught English and Art History at Catherine McAuley High for many years. She now teaches at the University of Southern Maine in Portland in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Classic Films. She recently wrote a children’s book,”Dahlov Ipcar Artist,” and has now completed another children’s book “Bernard Langlais Revisited.”