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Loading... Empire Falls (2001)by Richard Russo
...maybe even 4.25. Russo excels at creating believable, flawed, sometimes slightly heroic, sometimes rather pathetic characters that are-above all-horribly, embarrassingly human. Some painfully harsh (because true!) observations that just may have you recognizing pieces of yourself & reeling backward saying "ouch!". This is a somewhat epic voyage of a book, touching on a great many players & skipping backward & forward through time. This is handled very well, carefully building interest & empathy for the players involved. Shaving off fractions of points for a few things. I generally think Russo's females are not as well written & developed as his males, & that he tends to tie things up a little nicely for my taste. All in all a great, if emotionally draining, read. (  ) stacey2112 | Apr 22, 2013 |  Dominated by the Whiting family, the founders of the three mills that provided employment for most of the town's residents, Empire Falls finds itself in sharp decline at the turn of the twenty-first century. Its mills are closed, stores are boarded up, and its population is dwindling. The families that remain live on memories of the past and the shared fantasy that the mills will reopen and the once-thriving town will experience a renaissance. However, the formidable Mrs. Whiting, widow of the last Whiting son (and rumored to be the richest woman in central Maine), makes no concessions to the community's needs or fantasies. As the owner of the few viable businesses left in Empire Falls and a dependable, if begrudging, source of funds for essential town improvements, Mrs. Whiting wields her power over the town and its inhabitants with an iron will. Miles Roby was once known around town as a young man smart enough to escape Empire Falls. A devoted son, he put his dreams on hold when his mother's illness interrupted his last year of college. Twenty years later, Miles is the proprietor of Mrs. Whiting's just barely profitable Empire Grill, the soon-to-be ex-husband of Janine (who has left him for the slick owner of the flashy new health club), and the proud father of Tick, a bright, loving teenager. Seduced by Mrs. Whiting's promise to bequeath him the restaurant, Miles stoically submits to her arbitrary, often humiliating demands—until the accidental discovery of a family secret shocks him into a troubling reevaluation of his life and the small town that shaped it. Nothing, however, prepares him for the horrific event that ultimately sets him free. A very long book and small print. Quite hard to read. (  ) dalzan | Apr 21, 2013 | This was a very s-l-o-w read for me, but it wasn't because the book was not well-written. It was because it took awhile to absorb everything that Russo was trying to convey. What I absolutely loved about this book is that he could create a character who was simultaneously disagreeable and yet somehow lovable. While reading this book, I couldn't help thinking what a great movie it would be. So, I looked it up and it has been done. I'll be taking that out of the library soon...maybe today! ( ) espref | Apr 16, 2013 | Everybody in this novel is stuck, trapped in a dying town. There are villains, there are good guys. At the end of the book, after feints toward change and a high school massacre, every one seems well on their way to settling back into their old ruts. No thanks. (  ) nmele | Apr 6, 2013 | pithy, humorous, but flawed by author's use of school shooting as an anticlimax; characters were charming likeable, although Miles seemed unbelievable FKarr | Apr 6, 2013 |
 Russo's command of his story is unerring, but his manner is so unassuming that his mastery is easy to miss. He satisfies every expectation without lapsing into predictability, and the last section of the book explodes with surprises that also seem, in retrospect, like inevitabilities. As the pace quickens and the disparate threads of the narrative draw tighter, you find yourself torn between the desire to rush ahead and the impulse to slow down.
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0375726403, Paperback)Like most of Richard Russo's earlier novels, Empire Falls is a tale of blue-collar life, which itself increasingly resembles a kind of high-wire act performed without the benefit of any middle-class safety nets. This time, though, the author has widened his scope, producing a comic and compelling ensemble piece. There is, to be sure, a protagonist: fortysomething Miles Roby, proprietor of the local greasy spoon and the recently divorced father of a teenage daughter. But Russo sets in motion a large cast of secondary characters, drawn from every social stratum of his depressed New England mill town. We meet his ex-wife Janine, his father Max (another of Russo's cantankerous layabouts), and a host of Empire Grill regulars. We're also introduced to Francine Whiting, a manipulative widow who owns half the town--and who takes a perverse pleasure in pointing out Miles's psychological defects.Miles does indeed have a tendency to take it on the chin. (At one point he alludes to his own "natural propensity for shit-eating.") And his role as Mr. Nice Guy thrusts him into all sorts of clashes with his not-so-nice contemporaries, even as the reader patiently waits for him to blow his top. It would be impossible to summarize Russo's multiple plot lines here. Suffice it to say that he touches on love and marriage, lust and loss and small-town economics, with more than a soupçon of class resentment stirred into the broth. This is, in a sense, an epic of small and large frustrations: "After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble." Yet Russo's comedic timing keeps the novel from collapsing into an orgy of breast-beating, and his dialogue alone--snappy and natural and efficiently poignant--is sufficient cause to put Empire Falls on the map. --Bob Brandeis (retrieved from Amazon Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:08:17 -0400) With Empire Falls Richard Russo cements his reputation as one of America's most compelling and compassionate storytellers. Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it's the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town-and seems to believe that "everything" includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace.… (more) |
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