Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenal
Review: I am in awe of Richard Russo. Empire Falls is a wonderful novel, brilliantly crafted, yet completely readable. I have always enjoyed his work, but for some reason, I found this one even better than his other novels (which are terrific in their own right). The novel tells the story of Empire Falls, a Maine town that has seen better, much better days, and the people who inhabit it, primarily, Miles Roby, a fortyish man who himself has seen better days. Both Miles and the town of Empire Falls had shown much promise, but things changed. For the town, it was the closing of the textile factories about twenty years earlier. For Miles, it was his return to the town from college, one semester short of his degree. Miles now runs the Empire Diner under the thumb of Mrs. Whiting, a wealthy old woman who apparently owns most of the town. His marriage is almost over, his ex-wife soon to marry the local health club owner. He is trying to salvage his relationship with his teenage daughter, Tick, and save the restaurant he has been managing from financial ruin. He and all the other residents in the town keep trying to get their life back together, trying to find that promise that they all felt their lives once held, back when the mills were still working. What may sound like a depressing tale, actually never is, because the hope really is there and the story is told with much wonderful humor. Most of the characters, and their relationships with each other are funny, not in the Bridget Jones sort of way, but in an everyday sort of way. Miles' ex-wife, Janine, comes up with a funny, yet somehow sad, future of the lives of the Empire Falls High School football players and cheerleaders as she watches the big game from the stands that is devastatingly accurate, but funny just the same.Empire Falls is truly a fantastic novel. Very highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: a GOOD not GREAT book
Review: I really liked this novel, but it was occasionally slow in some places, contrived in others. Still, it is so much better than 99% of the books being published now. Russo has real heart and real humor. If you want something similar to this, but even stronger, even more touching and more funny and wild and true, pick up Brady Udall's THE MIRACLE LIFE OF EDGAR MINT. It's a truly great book and does all the the things Empire Falls does, only better.
Rating:
Summary: 1st Russo-but not the last!
Review: I really enjoyed Empire Falls. It is the first of his books I have read and will now have to go back and read the others. Having lived in a small town for the last 11yrs I could relate to the tale he told about dreams lost, lost souls and just trying to get along. Each character has his own search for what went wrong and how to try and get it right. I rooted for Miles to speak-up! The characters became a part of my life for a short time and it was a very enjoyable ride.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Such a great read with memorable characters, dialogue that is true to life and often laugh out loud hilarious, and interesting plot lines. Russo casts a wide net and even if everything he trolls for isn't hauled back in, one must envy his catch. The book stirred memories of Irving's Garp, but this book is deeper, wiser, and funnier. Hat's off to Russo, he's one of America's best authors and unfortunately, a bit of a secret.
Rating:
Summary: Great story of ordinary people
Review: This is the first Richard Russo book I have read, but it won't be the last. I got pulled into the beginning chapters and was at first somewhat disappointed by the italics and timeframe changes; however, it all came together. Great characters and some really funny dialogue in the midst of silent tragedy.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhile, but not vintage Russo
Review: After, his delightful hiatus in his lampoon of higher education "Straight Man", Russo has returned to the hardscrabble, blue collar milleu familiar to readers of his earlier works "Risk Pool" and "Mohawk". "Empire Falls" is another example of the author's deft ability to depict the gritty conditions, and resulting personalities and relationships in economically depressed rural towns. While overall I enjoyed this novel and found it engaging, it was disappointing in the shadow of his earlier works. A work should be totally engrossing to run nearly 500 pages, and at times I felt it dragged; I think editing 100 or so pages would have made it stronger. The plot tended to be somewhat formulaic, with an bitter controlling millionairess ruling the community and having an implausible intimate involvement with all its denizens whose lives she subverts as a manifestation of her own frustration. (She sees them while they're sleeping; she knows when they're awake). It includes a genre type of tragedy/crisis as its acme, and after the 400 preceding pages the novel concludes in an all too tidy fashion with all the bad guys getting their just deserves.
Rating:
Summary: His best yet!
Review: I've been a fan of Richard Russo since Straight Man came out in 1997, and I've waited (im)patiently for this book to be released ever since. Empire Falls is Russo on familiar ground, mining much of the same territory covered in novels like The Risk Pool-- tales of small town life in the Northeast (though in this case, Russo has moved north to Maine). His protagonist, Miles Roby, is a man who left the small Maine town of Empire Falls for the promise of a college education. He is forced to return prematurely to tend to his ill mother, and in the novel, the forty-year-old Roby is still there, flipping burgers at the Empire Grill. The book itself resounds with very familiar Russo conventions (the eccentric priest, the delinquent father, the imperious matriarch, the rational man caught in increasingly irrational situations), but in this work, Russo plumbs the depths of these characters more deeply and to greater effect than in any of his previous works. While possibly not as funny as the rest of his body of work, it is a deeper and ultimately more rewarding novel. I would highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: BUY THIS BOOK!!!
Review: NOBODY puts words together like Richard Russo...nobody makes me laugh so hard causing me to back track to re-read his genius like Richard Russo. Buy this book. Buy three of them! Give them to the people you like the most. I hope they are casting the movie...my vote is for Bruce Willis as Miles and Paul Newman as his scrappy father Max!
Rating:
Summary: Thrilled . . . again with Russo
Review: Richard Russo has the rare ability to break your heart and make you laugh, all on the same page. He proves this again in Empire Falls. However, where Russo's earlier novels are often playful and ironic, his newest is as ambitious a novel as I've read in a while. Its many levels go beyond normal character development and could be classified as "character intimacy." By the last page you know everyone so well that you get the feeling they will continue to live on and on, even when the novel is placed safely on your bookshelf. It's not as quick a read as Straight Man . . . and it's not as uplifting as Nobody's Fool . . . but Empire Falls is a gripping, emotinally draining book that any fan of literature should read.
Rating:
Summary: If I could write, I'd like to write like this guy
Review: What I've always liked best about Richard Russo's characters is that they are spectators. Watching and noting the things that happen to them as if they are helpless to change. And then they find some small thing the absolute last tolerable occurrence, and begin to affect a change. One of my friends dislikes Russo's characters, because, as he put it, "they never do anything!" But they do, it's just that they are wainting to choose just the right thing to do. I loved Empire Falls because of Miles Roby. Another good guy who is getting stepped all over (like most of the people I know) and who manages to not be such a simpleton that he doesn't notice. I could identify with the various crosses he has to bear - Walt the jerk who is engaged to his ex-wife, the bully Jimmy and the worry about Jimmy's son who wants Miles' daughter Tick. I love the shallowness of some of the characters, because, well, I know that there are lots of shallow people out there. They are so desperate that it makes me like them anyway. I work in a small town and there are so many aspects that Russo has captured so well. I've been so fond of all his books, and this is one I know I will return to (ok, maybe not so often as the 5 or 6 times I've read Straight Man...but then again, who knows?)
|
