Chances Are by Richard Russo review – the role of luck in American lives

This acute look at decisions and destiny follows three friends from the lottery of the Vietnam draft to the end of Obama’s presidency

Watching the lottery on television these days may bring the minimal chance of becoming a multimillionaire, but for American men born between 1944 and 1950, the numbers that were nationally broadcast either quickened or distanced the possibility of violent death. The order in which eligible males would be conscripted to fight in the Vietnam war was decided by random picking of capsules containing all 366 possible birthdays (the army had spotted the loophole through which leap year men might have escaped).

In the bravura opening scene of Richard Russo’s ninth novel, three 19-year-olds at a Connecticut arts college watch a tiny black-and-white TV in December 1969, as the first draft ballot unfolds. What steady Lincoln Moser, arty Teddy Novak and rock music-obsessed Mickey Girardi see will shape their fates.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ERCkbQ