Empire Falls by Richard Russo
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Book Reviews of Empire Falls
Book Review: Great Characters!
Summary: 5 Stars
I ordered this book based on Amazon's recommendation believing it to be a scifi novel involving the fall of some galactic empire. Little did I know how wrong I was. Empire Falls is a place in Maine and the novel is a modern day story about everyday people with everyday problems. I decided to give the book a chance and was very glad that I did.The book focuses on Miles Robey, the proprietor a one of Empire Falls few restaurants. Miles is a nice guy that throughout his life tried to please everybody. As a result he "wasted" a college education and kept a job running a losing business. He also married a woman (who never made an effort to improve her relationship with him) who only cared about looking good and impressing other people. Miles married her to avoid a romantic involvement with a crippled rich girl who was infatuated with him.
We meet several other interesting characters such as Miles daughter Tick (she reminds me a lot of Lisa from the Simpsons). Tick is kind of an outcast in school, possibly because she is smart beyond her years.
Then there is the mysterious Mrs. Whitting who owns half the town, and also Miles' restaurant. Miles makes the observation that Mrs. Whitting seems to sell parts of her holdings always at the right time. It seems to be Miles' fear of failure that prevents him from confronting her on obtaining a liquor license even though it would increase the business tremendously.
Miles' deceased mother was someone that had a good heart and a bad marriage. She had great plans for Miles to make a better life for himself by getting out of the town. She dies young from cancer and with her presence gone, Miles never a risk taker decides to continue to work at the restaurant rather than get out of the town to make a life for himself. Miles loves a waitress at the restaurant, who he has fawned over all his life. However, he marries a woman that nobody seemed to be interested in because he was afraid of pursuing the woman he really wanted and failing.
We have Miles' obnoxious father who is basically a freeloader who only looks out for himself. Then there is David who seems to be the only person in the book that thinks with some sense.
Empire Falls was a thriving town until the shifting economy caused the main factories to close. The characters are basically, so ingrained in the town that no matter how bad things get you know they will always stay.
I am sure we all know many people with the same characteristics as these people and quite possibly we hold many of these characteristics ourselves. That is what makes this book a very compelling read.
Book Review: Surprisingly Delightful
Summary: 5 Stars
Empire Falls by Richard Russo is the story of Miles Robyâs journey of discovery through family and community. As the quiet and sweet proprietor of the Empire Grill in a seemingly dead Maine factory town, Miles is, as his ex-wife describes him, âThe Worldâs Most Transparent Man,â even to the reader. His reserved yet passionate personality is conveyed perfectly through Russoâs use of humor, insight, and imaginative description. Russo is able to allow the reader to feel Milesâ rage as his ex-wifeâs new sixty-year-old husband heckles him for an arm wrestling match, and guilt as he recalls his motherâs life-long hope for him to escape Empire Falls and become something more than a restaurant manager. While the story is told from a subjective third person viewpoint, it is Milesâ thoughts and emotions that are most effectively conveyed and expressed with style and humanity. For example, upon sight of his bossâ crippled daughter (who harbors a deep and suicidal love for him), Milesâ intense urge to âget back in his car and leave a thick patch of burning rubber on the asphalt,â relates his feelings of guilt, contempt, entrapment, and conscience. Through these types of insights, the reader comes to understand why Miles would want to run screaming from a pathetic walker-bound girl, and finally, violently break the arm of his elderly marital replacement. Milesâ thoughts and actions are at times scornful and appalling, but they are genuinely human and few readers could deny wanting to act in the same way. The style with which these events are presented allows the reader to look past the simple and short-lived horror of his repressed anger and see the value and character of his personality. Miles displays the secretly hostile and sometimes homicidal tendencies of the human mind through Russoâs use of literary grace and small-town mentality. Through his struggles with his handicapped brother, teenage daughter, bitter ex-wife, drunken father, rich and boastful boss, law-breaking employees, and God, Miles exemplifies the middle-class struggle to find oneself amidst turmoil and misfortune. Richard Russo creates identifiable characters, giving each a mind, voice, and heart with which to translate their being. Empire Falls is a marvelous novel, dealing with a vast range of topics, from adulterous affairs to school shootings, with unique clarity and finesse.Book Review: Worthy of the Pulitzer
Summary: 5 Stars
Much has been said in praise of this book, all of which I'm in agreement, so I'll just add a few things. First, when reading a novel I tend to cast the characters with known performers. Not very creative and often limiting of my imagination, but I can't help myself- I love reading and movies, and it's hard to separate the two. Therefore, it was inevitable that I cast the major characters in this book, and James Gandolfini STILL stands out to me as the perfect person to play/represent Miles Roby. Gandolfini fits the physical image I have of Miles- big, awkward but gentle- as well as the emotional- intelligence and sensitivity masked by a shyness, the imposing physical presence and the grinding down that life has placed on him. I'm aware that Ed Harris is playing Miles in the HBO movie- I don't agree with that at all and it still doesn't change my image. Anyway- James Gandolfini=Miles Roby.
Secondly, this book should be played with a soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen. I don't know if Russo is a fan, but the author and the musician share a number of common themes: the value of work in our lives and the role that it plays in both sustaining us and wearing us down; unfulfilled dreams of love and success; the division between rich and poor and those in between in our culture; the desparate actions that desparate people are driven to that, while not excusable, are more understandable if viewed in the context of their lives; and the ultimate optimism that gives us a reason to believe at the end of every hard earned day. Read "Empire Falls" and then listen to any number of Springsteen albums, particularly "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "Nebraska". This book, like Springsteen's music, is haunting and will linger with you long after you close it for the final time.
This book provides great insight into how our work defines us, limits us but keeps us alive, as well as into the intricacies of human relationships and emotions that drive us but also have the potential to destory us. Miles Roby is one of the most sympathetic and realistic characters of modern fiction. "Empire Falls" ranks up with "Lonesome Dove" as Great American Novels.
In summary: Read it. Picture Tony Soprano without the gangster edge. Listen to The Boss.
Book Review: Great plot, exquisitely written & every bit a prize winner
Summary: 5 Stars
"Empire Falls (EF)" deserves to win this year Pulitzer Prize simply because it is so exquisitely written. It isn't particularly deep or weighty in content. Neither does it pretend to offer any profound insights into our human condition. What it does offer is great storytelling on which Richard Russo gets to display the virtues of his craft as a novelist. EF - the title, if you get it, has a double meaning - is full of thwarted and unfulfilled people. People whose lives are filled with regret and compromise because they didn't have the courage to follow their destinies, people who feel they deserve better. This condition doesn't just afflict the struggling or the down and out. Even the Whitings who own half the town cannot escape this curse. Protagonist Miles lusts hopelessly after waitress Charlene but finds himself playing good Samaritan to poor crippled rich girl Cindy who is love with him due to guilt and conditioning by his once-fallen-but-otherwise-saintly mother Grace. Wife Janine wrecklessly risks all for a second chance with Walt, who is long on promise but short on delivery, in retaliation against her dead marriage to Miles whom she despises and regards as a pathetic wimp. Unhappy daughter Tick is saddled with school outcast John when she secretly longs to rekindle a relationship with some boy she met briefly at Martha's Vineyard one summer. Corrupt cop with a complex Jimmy Minty goes out of his way to be hateful to Miles because deep deep down inside he craves Miles' acceptance....and it is this way with the other characters in the novel, except for the unapolegetically bad and incorrigible Max. He would be played by Jack Nicolson in a movie adaptation of EF. The story could easily have degenerated into farce or cheap melodrama. In Russo's expert hands, it is transformed into a tightly structured and compelling tale of human folly that's anchored by equal measures of poignance, humour and truth. Strong characterisation also makes us care deeply about their fate. The novel may be downbeat but never depressing. Russo isn't a pessimist. Even Francine Whiting, the town's black widow, reveals a side to herself nobody would have foreseen. EF is a big novel but you when it ends, you feel you haven't had enough of it. One of the best novels this season and every bit a prize winner !Book Review: Russo's Trilogy of Memory, Book Two
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't think Russo intended Nobody's Fool, "Empire Falls," and Bridge of Sighs: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) as a trilogy--I just came up with that myself because all three deal with how our memories of the past affect our lives.
Miles Roby is stuck in a dead-end job: manager of the Empire Grill--at least everyone else sees it as a dead end. Miles himself clings to the hope that Francine Whiting, owner of the Empire Grill and almost everything else in town, will follow through on her promise to give him ownership of the diner in her will--sort of a retirement plan. Because of this, he puts up with starvation wages and her seeming determination to thwart his attempts to make the Grill a thriving business. His passive approach to his own life drives everyone around him crazy.
Mrs. Whiting is not only Miles' employer, she was his mother's employer as well. At first Grace Roby worked in the offices of the town mill, owned by (who else?) the Whitings. Later she worked in the Whiting home, caring for Mrs. Whiting's disabled daughter. Grace had dreams that Miles would escape from Empire Falls and the clutches of Mrs. Whiting by going to college and becoming a professor. But while he was in college, his mother fell ill with cancer and Mrs. Whiting encouraged him, against Grace's wishes, to drop out and come home. He did come home and supported himself with a job at the Empire Grill. That's when Mrs. Whiting made her offer, dangling eventual ownership of the diner in front of him like the famous carrot.
Now he's been behind the counter for twenty-some years, no closer to leaving than he ever was. But one day he sees a photograph from the past that reveals a truth he'd never known, never even guessed. Suddenly his memories of his childhood and his mother take on a whole new meaning. Finally he understands Mrs. Whiting's true intentions and is freed from his passivity.
In "Empire Falls," Russo seems to be saying that if our memories of the past are incomplete in some crucial way, we can't move forward until the hidden truth is revealed.