Rating: 
Summary: The Real Stuff
Review: Richard Russo has drawn a real life picture of a dying town in Maine that owes its existence to a textile mill, now departed. His ability to draw his characters with real life hopes and dreams draws the reader into an intimate relationship with people that everyone knows. The universal neighborhood. A really captivating and thoroughly enjoyable look at small town America where life goes on whether we are ready or not. When the reader finishes he knows the characters as well as his friends and neighbors in any town. Five stars to Russo.
Rating: 
Summary: Good story and wonderful characters
Review: This was the first of Russo's books I have read. His writing style agreed with me, it was easy flowing without being too simplistic. He weaves a captivating story, combining past and present events appropriately. The characters are some of the best I've come across, I knew them so well. A bit of humor here and there was also fun. While the beginning may have been a bit slow at times, it was worth it to learn about the characters and the town, and prepare me for the shocking ending. I would definitely recomend this book as being worth the time it takes to read.
Rating: 
Summary: needed an objective eye before publication
Review: After "Straight Man" this was a decided disappointment. It had its high points, but I kept tripping up against minor but still relevant questions. If a woman (Charlene Gardner) is a knockout wouldn't she do anything BUT shrivel a man's private parts? Same with some of the high school details. Everyone I knew stopped wearing unicorn shirts after they hit puberty, regardless of their clique. And I just couldn't buy that Tick didn't already have email considering how much of today's teens' social life revolves around the computer. Okay, enough fixation on small flaws. EF reminded me of "I Know This Much is True." But the hero of the latter earned his insights and carthasis through painful therapy, whereas Miles Roby just seemed to bump along his disintegrating life with as much insight into where he was going and how he got that way as a canoe. He was annoyingly inert. He only changed when Russo wanted to nudge the plot along. Last, having been greatly entertained by Tick's perception of high school, I was disappointed that we didn't really get her verdict on the final tragedy - especially considering that she was the heroine.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed, but worthy of our attention
Review: Russo's latest isn't nearly as bad as some people will try to tell you; by the same token, it's not a classic, and it certainly isn't the author's best work, critically speaking. I totally agree with the other reviewer who said Russo seems to be struggling between a third-person omniscient and third-person limited perspective -- this is most blatant in the chapters that delve into the Zack and Jimmy Minty characters, but it's a problem that surfaces here and there throughout the book. The overall effect is one of narrative incongruity and even sloppiness that seems to get worse about halfway through the story. I also found much of what happened in the last several chapters rushed and improbable, as yet another reviewer commented. That said, I don't believe anyone has commented on the most interesting and instructive aspects of this novel, at least not that I'm aware of. "Empire Falls," intended or not, is something of a treatise on the rotten core of so-called small town American family values. This is a novel populated with disaffected teen misfits (Candace, John Voss); sadistic jocks (Zack); insipid, uncaring, and dangerously incompetent teachers (Tick's art teacher and Miles' drivers's ed instructor); corrupt law enforcers (Jimmy Minty); mean-spirited clergy (Father Tom); and a whole host of anti-intellectuals, rednecks, racists, misogynists, and homophobes. While it's the wonderfully messed-up heroes and heroines of "Empire Falls" that warm our hearts and keep us turning the pages, we really should be paying attention to the marginal characters if we want to understand what's wrong with small-town America and society at large. P.S. I hope Richard Russo considers writing another novel set entirely within the public school system. His dead-on insight into this environment is truly uncanny, and the high-school experiences of both Miles and Tick were, for me, some of the highlights of the book. (Doris Roderigue, Tick's narrow-minded, religiously conservative, corrupt, uninspired, incredibly stupid art teacher is so accurately portrayed it made me want to scream.)
Rating:
Summary: Involving but unoriginal
Review: There is no denying that I was caught up in the lives of these characters and I read through the book fairly quickly so I would say that it will keep your interest. I could'nt shake the idea that the whole thing seemed just too familiar though.The downtrodden protagonist,the all powerful villian controlling the entire town. Now that I think about it lets see--the hero has to come home from college and afterwards can't escape his small town,he has to battle evil in the form of the towns richest person--should'nt the name of this be Bedford Falls? While it is a good read and not as upbeat as "It's A Wonderful Life" this is clearly not an original story. More likely a case of someone getting lazy and recycling a story he's heard before. Maybe that could slip by if you don't pick a story everyone in the world is familiar with.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant portrait of small town life
Review: I read several other reviews on Amazon lamenting that this latest Russo novel reads like a screenplay. So ...it's a ... fine screenplay. To me, a good book is one that stays with you when you put it down. Miles Roby, his daughter Tick, Mrs. Whiting, and all the other Empire Falls characters seemed real to me; I found myself thinking about their respective plights every time I had to set the book down, and even now that I've finished it. This novel was the perfect mixture of poignancy and humor. It wasn't pretentious in the least, or over-the-top, like some books by other modern-day male authors.... If you can put your cynicism aside, I think you'll be swept away by Empire Falls.
Rating:
Summary: Russo's Best Yet!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Empire Falls. Russo gives us an excellent study of human emotions and colorful characters we can readily identify with. You don't have to wade very far into this book before you are caught up in the rushing currents of events that will have you flipping pages right to the end. Thought-provoking, engrossing and extremely well written. I've enjoyed all of Russo's books, but think that this one is his finest.
Rating:
Summary: Pulitizer quality
Review: Richard Russo's best novel, Empire Falls, marks the happy marriage of character -- his forte -- with plot, the latter a relatively minor consideration in his earlier work. His fictional community activity having switched from upstate New York (the early novels) to academia (Straight Man) to now industry-depressed Maine, Russo's new people have rounded. Just as observant, put-under, and sympathetic as ever, they are now locked, albeit struggling to unhook, to truth and rumor of history. Brilliantly, they emerge -- or most do -- with valiant stabs at redeeming some tomorrow. We readers are left gasping, hoping only that our tomorrow will include more published Russo, America's finest under acclaimed novelist. May his writings blossom to give us guidance and company into this new century.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and heartbreaking
Review: Novelists like Russo are few and far-between. He writes wonderfully funny dialogue, creates thoroughly three-dimensional characters, and constructs communities and situations that breathe with life. If you've not read Russo, this is a great place to start; he is immediately accessible. If you've read his other novels, you'll find it similar in tone to NOBODY'S FOOL, not as personal as THE RISK POOL , and less laugh-at-loud funny than STRAIGHT MAN. Like those books, however, the characters take on such resonance that the reader hates to turn the final page and say goobye.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I used to run out and buy Russo's novels in hardback (a splurge, for me). Russo's "The Risk Pool" is a minor American Realist classic, i.e., literature. It is best portrait of a working-class male anti-hero I've ever read. "Nobody's Fool" and "Mohawk" were great reads, too sentimental to match the quality of "The Risk Pool." Sadly, "Straight Man" was a typically mediocre Academic novel. I resolved to be more careful the next time, but I was suckered by a NEW YORK TIMES review which suggested that he was back on form with "Empire Falls." I won't be buying anymore Richard Russo. He's lost it. Obviously caving in to the dollar. "Empire Falls" has a cutey-hero probably modeled on Charlie Brown. The prose is lumbering until the last third of the book, which goes from "pause" to "fast forward." And it's as formulaic as TV movie. Remember the Larry McMurtry of "Leaving Cheyenne" and "Horseman, Pass By" and the brand-name stuff he co-writes nows? Remember the first James Taylor album and the perfectly nice stuff he's done since?
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