Empire Falls
by Richard Russo, Ron Mclarty

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Book Reviews of Empire Falls

Book Review: What a disappointment!!
Summary: 2 Stars

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 soup?on 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

From his first novel, Mohawk, to his most recent, Straight Alan, Richard Russo has demonstrated great affinity for the tragicomic human condition, and here he expands his geographical and psychological claims on the small town, blue-collar heart of the country.

Empire Falls, Maine, has seen the inexorable failure of its logging and textile industries, the once mighty holdings of the Whiting clan, presided over by the last scion's widow, now mostly amount to decrepit real estate.

Miles Roby gazes over this ruined kingdom front the Empire Grill, an opportunity that has become the albatross of his ambitions. Brought home from college by family obligations-- his mother ailing, his father it loose cannon -- Miles himself now has a divorce to contend with, but also a beloved daughter to guide gently through adolescence.

Miles also proves an excellent guide to this hardscrabble, persistent community: fathers and sons and daughters, living and dead, rich and poor. Shot through with mysteries of generations and the shattering visitations of the nation at large -- Empire Falls is a social novel of stunning ambition, and a master storyteller's magnum opus.

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