Empire Falls by Richard Russo
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Book Reviews of Empire Falls
Book Review: A Sense of Personal Failure
Summary: 5 Stars
Empire Falls has been losing population due to the closing of the mills. Miles Roby runs a diner for the widow of the rich man and previous owner of the mills, C.B. Whiting. Miles is to receive the Empire Grill in the event of the death of Francine Whiting. Miles's father had been a house painter. School friends let him know that where he had lived had been labeled the joke house. Miles is separated from his wife. He has a daughter in high school, a brother who now helps out at the grill, and a father who still embarasses him. In the Key West the father, Max, is often mistaken for a local, a conch. Miles is forty two years old and, according to his brother, he is wasting his life. His mother-in-law, Bea, feels that he is the nicest, kindest man in town.
During Miles's childhood Max was jailed for being a town nuisance. The family's cars were repossessed so often he had once asked his mother if his father, who was absent frequently, had been repossessed. Miles had nearly failed driver's ed. because he had no car to practice on and had nearly killed the instructor. His mother's employer, Mrs. Whiting, had offered to be his coach and to use her Lincoln for practice. Miles knew there was a price--friendship with the socially-nil crippled Cindy Whiting. Over time the Whitings seemed to become his mother's other family.
At a football game Miles learns from a friend, the high school principal, his daughter's art work has been selected for a regional competition. Miles sees his mother's photograph in a newspaper column of the 'remember when' sort showing her in the shirt factory where she had been employed at the time. A catastrophe, I will leave to the prospective reader to discover and delineate, overtakes the characters just prior to the time Miles begins to discern some of the factors determining his personal circumstances and fate. The book invokes powerful emotion in the reader. If the ending seems too melodramatic for some tastes, assuredly the journey to that point is delightful.
Book Review: A Masterpiece of Character Creation and Development
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Empire Falls" is the kind of book that's just fun to curl up with and enjoy at a slow pace. A novel of "blue-collar life," "Empire Falls" follows everyman Miles Roby, a forty-two-year-old manager at the Empire Grill, the final restaurant holdout in the dying Maine mill town of Empire Falls. The enigmatic Mrs. Whiting owns everything in town, from the Grill to the defunct textile mills whose closing began the slow process of decay that led to the events in the book. Miles is joined by an enormous cast of characters, including his soon-to-be ex-wife, the fitness-obsessed Janine; their artistic but alienated child Tick; Max, Miles' Dionysian father; Jimmy Minty, Miles' friend from school and the main policeman in town; Zack, Minty's son, who isn't over being spurned by Tick in matters of love; and a whole host of other memorable characters.Russo breathes life into these people through lengthy historical flashbacks, usually in the midst of their day-to-day conversations, a technique that lends the book a leisurely pace and prevents what little action there is from taking precedence over the characters and their development. The "action," which is really just an extension of the character development anyway, mostly revolves around events that lead each character to become more complete people. Note: not necessarily BETTER people, but more COMPLETE people.
It's been said that an author can never create a convincing person, just a hollow shell. Russo bucks that wisdom in "Empire Falls," managing to create people so subtle and nuanced the reader would swear they are merely doppelgangers for the inhabitants of a real town - Somewhere, USA. For that talent, no doubt, Russo took home his Prize, and deservedly so. Engaging without being pretentious, and grounded without sinking into the muck, "Empire Falls" makes a fantastic read for anyone who enjoys a good, long character-driven book. Other authors, take note: this is how characters should be developed.
Final Grade: A
Book Review: Funny, warm, honest, real. Rent the HBO movie, too.
Summary: 5 Stars
Russo slips into the minds of his characters with artful grace while successfully maintaining an omniscient narrative voice. This is one of the best novels that I have read in years. The main character of Miles Roby manages a humble grill in small-town Maine. Miles is simply living his life from day to day and trying not to bring harm to those around him. Throughout the book, he grapples with the memory of his mother and tries to make sense of her decision to deny herself the pleasures of love and romance, opting instead for a Catholic routine of self-deprivation and guilt.
A New England native, I found the descriptive powers of a once prosperous factory town were right on point: the now abandonned main street; empty mills and store fronts; bored teenagers with nothing to do on the weekend after the highschool football game; and residents who are endlessly hoping that maybe, just maybe, a wealthy investor from Boston might purchase the old factories and mills and bring life back to the town.
The sub-plot involves Mile's teenage daughter, Tic. As a mother of two teenagers, I was amazed at Russo's understanding of the stress faced by modern day kids in public schools which are more like emotional war zones. As a woman, I was equally amazed at Russo's understanding of female sexuality and the desire that so many women have for power- not just over men, but over their worlds, as illustrated in Miles' bitter and punishing ex-wife Janine, and the town's controlling matriarch, Francine Whiting.
My husband and I rented the HBO movie on Netflix starring Ed Harris and Helen Hunt and also loved it. Paul Newman plays Miles' quirky and shiftless father, and Joanne Woodward plays Francine Whiting. You get the sense that Paul and Joanne really enjoyed playing these contrasting roles. Russo also wrote the screenplay, which explains why the movie so closely resembles the book and captures the story so well. This is a must read and a must watch in every way. Kudos to Russo!
Book Review: The beginning of the end
Summary: 5 Stars
It takes a lot of courage from a writer to go on with his plan until the end-- mostly when in the end of the book one of his characters will do something very shocking and disturbing. And Richard Russo is not afraid of that in his "Empire Falls". However much it is sad, the situation that turns out in one of the climaxes of the novel is very plausible and can happen --actually has happened a couple in any place.To tell the story of a small town ruining after the close of a local big factory that employed most of the city's inhabitants, Russo uses not only sociology and psychology, but also a big dose of economy. Yes, these three sciences are of much help to the talented writer proves that the economical decline results in a moral one --or vice-versa.
The lives of his characters are only the reflection of their city's life. Everything is slowly falling into pieces --literally and metaphorically. And as one might expect, from all this fall, a hero would rise, but, like in real life, there are no heroes, only a group of devastated souls trying to survive, but suffering in their personal lives the consequences of an economic decline of their city -- this is the beginning of the end of their prosperity, in other words, of the world as they know.
Mr. Russo's writing is clear as crystal. There are useless words; his prose is straight --as his characters. Not only has he written a novel with a great plot, but also with unforgettable -- and some lovable-- characters. Dramatic as it would be, the writer still finds a lot of room for a laugh and lots of irony. Like most great novels, "Empire Falls" transcends any label, and becomes an universal book --which is more than most readers bargain for.
Awarding Richard Russo with the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2002 was not a fluke. His novel has qualities and ambitions that make it one of the best in the 21st Century. I have no doubts that in the future people will regard "Empire Falls" as a classic.
Book Review: A wonderful novel that will stay with you
Summary: 5 Stars
The elegance of this 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning novel can be described best by one of his characters, teenager Tick, who decides "just because things happen slow doesn't mean you'll be ready for them." Miles, the central character of Russo's story, runs the Empire Grill in economically depressed Empire Falls, Maine. He ekes out a life hoping for parity: that his loyalty to the grill and to its wealthy owner Mrs. Whiting will result in his owning the business, that his patience with his daughter Tick will be rewarded with openness, that his soon-to-be-ex wife Janine will find what was lacking in him in her fiancé Walt, that his youthful failure to escape the town will have some redemption. But the complexity of Mrs. Whiting's interest in him remains out of his grasp, and the dynamics of Tick's life are largely hidden from him. Janine has a growing need for exactly what she hated so much about Miles. Worst of all, Miles sees himself as destined to remain a loser who gives and never gets. Russo explores the storylines of all these characters and others, allowing the reader intimate glimpses into their lives. In Empire Falls, relationships between husbands and wives and between parents and children are never simple. Russo's characters suffer in ways that are passionately ordinary - that is, until everything funnels into one explosive, extraordinary moment. I literally had to put the book down to absorb this climatic scene. That this scene was both prepared for and totally shocking speaks to the author's skill.I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The characters are lively and sympathetic - even the ones that might be called villains - and despite the quiet nature of the narrative, it is a difficult book to put down.