Customer Reviews

Empire Falls

5 star:		(245)
4 star:		(123)
3 star:		(81)
2 star:		(46)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

The elegance of this 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning novel can be described best by one of his characters, teenager Tick, who decides "just because things happen slow doesn't mean you'll be ready for them." Miles, the central character of Russo's story, runs the Empire Grill in economically depressed Empire Falls, Maine. He ekes out a life hoping for parity: that his loyalty to the grill and to its wealthy owner Mrs. Whiting will result in his owning the business, that his patience with his daughter Tick will be rewarded with openness, that his soon-to-be-ex wife Janine will find what was lacking in him in her fiancé Walt, that his youthful failure to escape the town will have some redemption. But the complexity of Mrs. Whiting's interest in him remains out of his grasp, and the dynamics of Tick's life are largely hidden from him. Janine has a growing need for exactly what she hated so much about Miles. Worst of all, Miles sees himself as destined to remain a loser who gives and never gets. Russo explores the storylines of all these characters and others, allowing the reader intimate glimpses into their lives. In Empire Falls, relationships between husbands and wives and between parents and children are never simple. Russo's characters suffer in ways that are passionately ordinary - that is, until everything funnels into one explosive, extraordinary moment. I literally had to put the book down to absorb this climatic scene. That this scene was both prepared for and totally shocking speaks to the author's skill.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The characters are lively and sympathetic - even the ones that might be called villains - and despite the quiet nature of the narrative, it is a difficult book to put down.

This is my first novel by Richard Russo and I was captivated by his ability to breathe life into a diverse group of characters. From protagonist Miles Roby to his irascible father Max, his hauntingly sad mother Grace, his nemesis Mrs. Whiting, his touching daughter Tick, and many more, we are treated to people described so vividly they come to life and seem like the people we might know and want to either hang out with or avoid at all costs if we lived in Empire Falls.

There are too many plot lines to detail, but they all are brought together nicely and no reader is left with unanswered questions thanks to an interesting epilogue.

All the problems of seeking a better life but being relegated to the blue collar life of a mill town whose mill has long closed, are embodied in Miles Roby, reluctant proprietor of the town's grill. In the opening pages he sees his teen-age daughter Tick walking home from school with a hunched back weighed down by her symbolic backpack representing all the problems she faces---the dissolution of her parents marriage, a stepfather she despises, a widening emotional gap with her mother, the dreaded loss of friends and social standing, and being coupled with the school's most tortured and disturbed student.

The story moves slowly but the characters are so richly drawn you will be totally engrossed and hard pressed to put this one down. When the story does reach its climax, there are plenty of shocks and surprises and a realization that life is not perfect and its flaws are with us forever to either cope with or be overwhelmed by.

I will admit that about halfway through Empire Falls, I put it away for a few days. Although fascinating in its nuance and delightful in its humor, it was beginning to plod (so I thought) and I began to wonder whether it quite deserved the prestiguous prize on its cover.

Little did I realize the expertise of its author. He knows exactly what he's doing, bringing a complex tale to a slow boil. When the fever of rumination breaks toward the end, when something big really does happen, the reader is that much more taken by it because Russo has done more than introduce the characters--he has brought you into their lives, into their heads, and you genuinely care about their fate. Every one of the citizens in Empire Falls is a real, complex, believable person. At least once I had to remind myself that this heartbreaking tale, so vividly funny and genuinely tragic, is a work of fiction.

That Russo teases humor from sadness in such a natural, graceful way would make The Empire Falls a remarkable book. What makes it literature is its relevance, its reality, the fact that it might as well be a true story.

When asked what this book was about, I was left describing a very generic storyline about the lives of severl people in a blue collar town in Maine. This book is so much more than that. I couldn't do the book any justice by trying to describe it in a sentence or two. Empire Falls is simply one of the most touching human dramas I have ever read. This book works on so many different levels, it's easy to see why it won the Pulitzer. Some of the many sub-plots include: the heartwarming story of a father's relationship with his teenage daughter and his heartfelt desire for her to have a better life; a mother experiencing a mid-life crisis and trying to recapture a youth she never experienced in the first place; a years-long, unspoken and unrequited love between co-workers; and the ever-maddening, often comic, always tragic relationship between Miles Roby and Mrs. Whiting. At times, the stories Russo relates about these characters made me laugh out loud. A truly spectacular book, one which will forever be one of my favorites of all time.

I'm a huge Richard Russo fan. I love his voice, his take on life, his ability to find humor in even the most bleak of circumstances. "Nobody's Fool" and "Straight Man" are two of the most consistently funny books I've ever read. I approached "Empire Falls" with great anticipation, especially after it won the Pulitzer. Having just finished it, I have to say that I found it less successful than its two predecessors. Ultimately, there seems to me to be a lack of consistancy in its tone and focus. Whereas Miles is definitely meant to be the main character, we spend too much time in other people's heads. For the most part Russo is right on (more than right on) in his depictions of these people. His characterization of Janine is so insightful, and Cindy Whiting's final speech to Miles is brilliantly to the point. Russo nails the human condition far better than most writers out there, and he does it in consistently disarming ways. The flashbacks are lovely, and there is heart and an emotional richness in this book that are missing from his previous works. (I've read everything but "The Risk Pool.") But Miles is as frustrating for the reader (this reader, at least) as he is for so many of the other characters. Ultimately, somehow, somewhere "Empire Falls" goes just a bit off track, enough to make me, at least, a little puzzled by it. I found the ending both inevitable and unsatisfying, almost as if Russo had boxed himself into a corner and didn't know where to go. A lot seems unresolved, but perhaps that's the author's point...so much in life is just that. Look, if you like Russo you must read this. But a friend who didn't know his work found "Empire Falls" just too long and pointless. I can't say I'm completely surprised, but at the same time, there's enough in there that makes you glad to have someone like Russo around to champion the underdog, the Everyman, and make you think about life and its complexities in a fresh way.

I've been a fan of Richard Russo since Straight Man came out in 1997, and I've waited (im)patiently for this book to be released ever since. Empire Falls is Russo on familiar ground, mining much of the same territory covered in novels like The Risk Pool-- tales of small town life in the Northeast (though in this case, Russo has moved north to Maine). His protagonist, Miles Roby, is a man who left the small Maine town of Empire Falls for the promise of a college education. He is forced to return prematurely to tend to his ill mother, and in the novel, the forty-year-old Roby is still there, flipping burgers at the Empire Grill. The book itself resounds with very familiar Russo conventions (the eccentric priest, the delinquent father, the imperious matriarch, the rational man caught in increasingly irrational situations), but in this work, Russo plumbs the depths of these characters more deeply and to greater effect than in any of his previous works. While possibly not as funny as the rest of his body of work, it is a deeper and ultimately more rewarding novel. I would highly recommend it.

This is the first Richard Russo book I have ever read. A friend told me, between fits of giggling, how funny some of the scenes were in "Straight Man", one of his previous works, and convinced me to give Russo a try. I picked up a copy of "Empire Falls" and recently finished it just before it won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. At first, I was very surprised at this award, but the more I've thought about it, this does make sense. Russo in "Empire Falls" has perfectly captured a snippet of real, everyday life. There are what appear to be character development flaws, loose ends, unaddressed questions, and plenty of the mundane aspects of daily life that are open to criticism. However, despite what Hollywood shows us, THIS is what 98% of reality is like for all us "regular folks" and Russo has described this imperfection superbly.

The central character in this book is Miles Roby. He grew up in the dying fictional mill town of Empire Falls in central Maine and has never quite been able to escape from it. He is now 42 and running the Empire Grill hoping to succeed enough by hanging on to allow his beloved daughter nicknamed Tick to escape completely like he almost did. The cast of everyday characters unfolds from this common premise. Some are annoying (the Silver Fox), some endearing (Bea and David), some downright disturbing (John Voss), and some all-too-familiar (Max). You will feel anyone of them could be your neighbor, co-worker, or even a relative! Some metaphor's are obvious like the "weight of the World" in the form of Tick's huge school backpack, Miles' ever suffering mother's name of "Grace", or even Francine Robideaux as the Devil. Some are puzzling like the waitress-for-life Charlene or the banished to the boonies liberal Roman Catholic priest Father Mark. Small (all?) towns all have their little secrets and Empire Falls is no exception. Most of the details Russo so ably describes link together the inhabitants of this town in some way over the years leading to a not so surprising explosive conclusion. You can almost feel it coming through the pages as we bob and bump along in the current of life together.

There are many things the reader could initially want to criticize about "Empire Falls", not the least of which would be the seeming obviousness of the title. Upon thinking about some of these gripes, I couldn't help but notice that many of them are things that bother me about my own experience in life. I realized I wanted to get on Miles' case at times for the same character issues that occasionally dog my own character! It takes one to know one, let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Russo can cut alarmingly close to the bone! Keep this in mind when you read through this fine book as I believe it will help you in seeing beyond what appear to be flaws in "Empire Falls". I'm not saying this book is pure literary perfection, but it sure is a great read! Highly recommended!

Sorting through new releases in a small bookstore in Cork, Ireland, I found Empire Falls. Russo's previous triumph -- Straight Man -- made me receptive to his next work, and he did it again. Empire Falls beguiled me and drew me into an intricate web.

While this is fiction, Russo has a method for intricate detail, small asides, and colorfully connected characters, coloring each with a clear sense of reality. Miles Roby has an understandably difficult life to manage: a disappointed soon-to-be ex-wife, a beautiful mother dying young, a struggling diner in failing blue-collar northern city, a troubled teenaged daughter, and several old nemeses he simply can't shake in this small, decaying town.

And the middle-aged fears and doubts Russo portrays reminded me of my own mortality and the value of family and friends. Like Will and Joel in James Kaplan's Tw Guys from Verona, Miles and David Roby share some dark secrets and common struggles, not as supermen or masters of the universe, but as likeable if crippled protagonists. And Russo has the talent to remember the pettiness and pain of high school life as well. After reading this, you want to hug your children, call your retired parents, and make better contact with your friends. Humanity triumphs.

I picked up Russo's latest with fairly high expectations. "Mohawk" and "The Risk Pool" proved that he knew how to tell a story. "Nobody's Fool" (my personal fav) packed in more understanding of the human condition, compassion for characters making frustrating choices, and humor in every page than most modern American authors can muster for their collected works. And "Straight Man" had me laughing out loud (my roommate thought I was losing my mind- waking her up at two in the morning to listen as I recited passages from the book probably didn't help). When I first cracked "Empire" it was with skepticism. How long could one writer's streak last?

Well, it ain't over yet. "Empire" is akin to "Mohawk" in structure and style, but the former is the promise of the later fulfilled. Russo doesn't tell you about the town, he invites you to live there. His introduces you to people, not mere characters upon which he hangs his plot, but living, breathing people who allow you to see the world through their eyes. Though epic in scope, Russo never allows the book to feel less than completely personal. The inhabitants' stories engaged me and turned the pages for me. It wasn't until the end of the book that I was able to gain any persepective on the story as a whole and, in my oppinion, that is the mark of a truely great writer. Like Toni Morrison and Russell Banks, Russo understands how to balance descriptive prose with a well-paced plot. His writing engages me emotionally without descending into a series of thematically important capital-M Moments that is the burden of so many modern authors (Grisham, Crichton, Rice, Roth, Atwood). Added to all of this is Russo's excellent sense of humor, which is no less evident in "Empire" than in any of his other novels. Like Thomas Pynchon, Russo gives you the full absurdity of life but, unlike the "Vineland" scribe, it's an absurdity that doesn't feel too far removed from reality.

I always find it difficult to finish a Russo novel. I know that I'm leaving behind people I've grown to care for. "Empire" was no different. But, like all of the others before, Russo found an ending without finality. He allows the populace of Empire Falls to live on in the imagination of the reader. At the risk of sounding corny, I will be returning to Empire Falls again and again, just as I often revisit Mohawk and Bath.

One final note: I'm sure the pulitzer commitee could care less what I think but THEY NEED TO GIVE THIS BOOK A PRIZE.

Richard Russo's EMPIRE FALLS builds slowly, concentrating on developing the characters while the plot seems largely incidental. Every few chapters, an italicized section will take the reader back into the past, shedding some light on the characters' current relationships and motivations. Then, the last 100 pages or so feature an event-filled, shattering climax that you won't see coming. Then, the author cleverly sums it all up, answering every possible question about these characters and this town that you could want to know.

It was a great book.

Miles Roby, the central character stuck in his hometown despite his desire and his late mother's desire for him to move on, is such a kind, decent, put-upon man that you, the reader, are eager to fight for him or wait patiently until he's willing to fight for himself.

This book was hilarious, insightful, interesting and personal.

If you've ever felt trapped by your own circumstances, you'll be able to relate to Miles and to celebrate as he goes through his life, learning that there are dark secrets that led to his particular situation.

I highly recommend EMPIRE FALLS.