One of Richard Russo's best novels. A witty and touching story about how divine grace or a curse descends upon the sleepy backwater town of North Bath - each of its inhabitants chooses how to see it. Donald Sullivan, known to everyone as Sal, is sixty years old and has spent his whole life persistently making mistakes, though he is by no means a fool. He is lonely despite being surrounded by people, his painful knee sometimes makes moving difficult, his friends are such that enemies are sometimes unnecessary, and troubles rain down on Sal one after another, or perhaps he attracts them himself. He has always relied only on himself, choosing his own path, and if that path led to a dead end - then he is the fool. A difficult childhood with a despotic father, an unsuccessful marriage, one failure after another - that is Sal, but no one dares call him a loser because Sal chooses who he wants to be. And now a new complication: the son whom Sal barely knows arrives in North Bath, and something must be done with him - otherwise he will repeat Sal's unenviable fate, a man who attracts troubles, big and small. Late autumn and early winter become yet another "stupid streak" in the life of "not-a-fool" Donald Sullivan, and he will again set out to overcome this streak, once more choosing the path of self-destruction, on which there will be both joy and bitterness in equal measure. "No Fools" is the first book in the trilogy about North Bath, a true encyclopedia of American rural life. Irony, humor, warmth, humanity, and charming characters. This novel is about how the foolish things people do can sometimes be much wiser and nobler than the actions of the calculating and correct.