Empire Falls
by Richard Russo

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Book Reviews of Empire Falls

Book Review: "Just beyond the factory and mill..."
Summary: 5 Stars

It didn't take me long to find exactly what I was looking for: "Empire Falls," a novel by Richard Russo. Published in May 2001 and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. And, as luck would have it, a novel about Maine by a resident Maine author!!

Welcome to Empire Falls, a fictional small town in the fictional county of Dexter, in the real live state of Maine. Empire Falls is very typical of the small mill towns nestled alongside Maine's great rivers - the Kennebec, the Androscoggin, and the Penobscot. At river's edge, there's a shirt factory and a textile mill, both long closed and boarded up. Most of the small businesses along Empire Falls' main street are likewise abandoned; plywood has replaced plate glass in most of the storefront windows.

Meet the people who live in Empire Falls: Miles Roby, the book's protagonist... he's a really nice guy... early forties... soon to be divorced from Janine. He's the proprietor of the Empire Grill, a little "greasy spoon" that he runs on behalf of Mrs. C.B. Whiting, the owner. He hopes to inherit the eatery when Mrs. Whiting dies...

Janine, Miles' "almost ex-" is trying hard to dump Miles as fast as she can. Even before the divorce is final, she's taken up with Walt Comeau, the "Silver Fox," an obnoxious sixty-year old local "swinger" who owns the town's aerobics club. Since she and Walt have become an "item," Janine has dropped fifty or so pounds, rediscovered her libido, (something she thinks Miles has lost permanently), and is addicted to fitness.

Tick is Miles' and Janine's teenage daughter. Probably a borderline anorexic. Filled with teenage angst, but a source of comfort to many of her likewise angst-ridden high school friends. She lives with her mother, who she can't stand, and spends most of her free time working at the Empire Grill with Miles and her uncle David.

Max Roby is Miles' "sempty"-year old father - a real deadbeat, he thinks nothing of stealing money from Father Tom, the senile retired Catholic priest, or from his own son for that matter. Max, along with Walt Comeau, is one of the great thorns in Miles' side.

Overseeing this cast of characters is Mrs. C.B. Whiting, the last in the line of Whitings that settled in Empire Falls and built the textile Mill and shirt factory. Mrs. Whiting, nearing seventy years old, and as sharp as a tack, tries to rule her fiefdom with a "mailed fist inside a velvet glove..."

These and many other characters form part of the fabric of Empire Falls, a tiny dot on the central Maine landscape. peaceful, bucolic little community comprised of the noble, the venal, the humble, the vain, the rich, the poor, the beggar, and the thief. A community soon to be tested by a sudden, unexpected, senseless act of violence...

All of these people stumble and struggle their way toward the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams in this masterfully told story by novelist Richard Russo.

Two attributes of "Empire Falls" made this book a distinct pleasure to read, from beginning to end: first, Russo writes with tremendous wit. Many of the scenes in "Empire Falls" are very funny indeed, imbued with the same kind of tragi-comic satirical wit that graced the pages of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22."

The second endearing quality of this superb novel is Russo's accurate portrayal of small town life in Maine. Russo's descriptions of the town of Empire Falls - with its red brick mill buildings dominating the skyline; the old, dilapidated houses; the rusty cars meandering down Main Street; the rusty old iron bridge forming the town's lifeline with the outside world - form powerful mental images of many of the towns in which I've actually lived, worked, and played. Russo's characters bear a striking resemblance to many people with whom I've associated over the years.

"Empire Falls" is definitely not an "action" novel. You're not going to be bowled over by a riveting story line, or a well defined plot filled with thrilling escapades involving heroes and villains. No, this novel is instead a book that introduces the reader to a group of ordinary people with ordinary fears, anxieties, hopes, and aspirations. You get to follow them as they struggle through their ordinary lives.

MY VERDICT: "Empire Falls" is a wonderful novel... rich in detail, literate, alternately funny and tragic, and a powerful statement about small town life in America. I think it's destined to become one of the enduring novels of our generation. Read and enjoy!!

Summary of Empire Falls

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

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