I'm ambivalent about this book, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction for 2002. On the one hand the writing is skillful & has a rambling, easy quality that's admirable & a pleasure to read. On the other hand not a lot happens until the final 50 pages of the book when the author unaccountably (& almost literally) blows everything up for no apparent reason. On the one hand there are some wonderfully written characters here, particularly Tick - one of the most effective portraits of an adolescent that I've read in recent fiction. On the other hand there are also some dreadfully caricatured people who never rise beyond their cardboard cutout outlines - Janine, Tick's mother comes immediately to mind.

This book is deeply satisfying when Russo focuses on his characters & their relationship to each other & to this dying small town & its history. It is deeply disappointing when he strays into sensationalist ripped from the headlines territory. The ways that it is deeply satisfying make the ways that it disappoints that much more disappointing, of course.

Having said all of that, I'm glad I read it & I enjoyed large chunks of this enormously. I'll definitely look for more of his work. ( )

The story of Miles Roby and his daughter, Tick, the Whiting family, and the decline of the town of Empire Falls.

After finishing the book, I thought it would make an excellent book for a compare and contrast paper for school. Nearly any two people in the book could be taken together and compared or contrasted or both on their points of view, personalities, and themes in the book. Another paper could be written on the power each character has and how it affects their positions relative to one another. One could also write about the town of Empire Falls, which is almost a character itself in the book. The descriptions decline of the structures and characters during their slowly detailed lives were immersive. I felted like I could stand in Empire Falls as much the same as any abandoned mill town on a river in New England. ( )

Follows the movie very closely. Kept picturing Ed Harris and Paul Newman, which isn't bad. ( )

Empire Falls is the story of a one-industry town that has lost its industry. The people who live in the town are the real focus of this book, and I was drawn into their lives as if I, too, were a resident.

For most of the book, it appeared that it wouldn't be driven by plot. The story didn't build towards one seminal event, much as real life rarely does. Rather, it is a series of events, some major, others less so, and it's not always immediately clear which are which. I liked that aspect of the book very much.

This is the story of MIles Roby, who runs the Empire Grill with his brother David. Miles is about to be divorced from Janine, who in turn is about to be married to a youth-obsessed fitness guru. Miles' daughter, Tick, is in high school, and her story about being popular (or not) is very well told.

Towards the end, the book becomes more plot driven, but doesn't lose its focus on Miles' character, which is its real strength. ( )

Russo paints a vivid, if bleak, picture of small town USA and embraces the reader, drawing them in to his narrative of the lives of two families at different ends of the income spectrum. The novel ambles on for most of the time and is a good read, taking a dramatic turn at the end, which seems slightly out of kilter with the rest of the novel. ( )