John Russell’s “All the Right Circles” Turns a Lawyer’s Life Upside Down When He Learns A Family Secret in North Carolina’s Racial History
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:09:06 — 63.4MB)
In this episode 138, we visit with John Russell, author of “All the Right Circles,” a book set in the 1990s in Raleigh, North Carolina, with action in Charlotte, too, that explores themes of race, class, and money in a changing world of relations between men and women, society, business and politics across three generations.
Diana Spechler, novelist and New York Times columnist says: “All the Right Circles is reminiscent of an Updike novel, had Updike been southern — it reads like the best gossip, the kind relayed in hushed voices at the fanciest cocktail parties in North Carolina. It’s a compulsively readable, gorgeously written exploration of intimacy and of power.”
We start the show with John reading from the opening pages of the book, where we learn about the significance of the highway that makes a circle out of protagonist Jack Callahan’s home town of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Connect With the Author
About the Author:
John Russell is the author of ALL THE RIGHT CIRCLES, as well as the prize-winning novel FAVORITE SONS, which the New York Times heralded as a “… a novel of ideas sweeping grandly through more than forty years of Southern history.” He has worked as a book editor in the publishing industry, as a lawyer, and a consultant for businesses and government.
An active lecturer and essayist, John has spoken on policy and literary topics in venues as varied as London, Basel, Prague, Sao Paulo, and Beijing, as well as across the United States. His writing has appeared in Southern Cultures, the Los Angeles Times, the Raleigh News and Observer, and other periodicals.
A native of Greensboro, North Carolina, Russell was born in 1954 — the same year as Hurricane Hazel and Brown vs Board of Education — each of which caused major disturbance. He was educated in the public schools of that city, the University of North Carolina, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School. He and his wife have six children and a grandson, and divide their time between North Carolina and Mexico.
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More Praise for All the Right Circles
Clyde Edgerton, best-selling author of Lunch at the Picadilly and Walking Across Egypt: “John Russell has hit all the right notes — literary, historical, suspenseful — for a full-word that delivers. All the Right Circles takes ‘where we’ve been’ to help us see where to go. Don’t miss the kind of gripping reading experience that is too rare these days.”
Lee Smith, national best-selling author of Guests on Earth: “Nobody knows more about politics and power, race and class in the American South than John Russell. All the Right Circles is a latter-day All the King’s Men — a smart, provocative and engaging read.”
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