Empire Falls

This is my first novel by Richard Russo and I was captivated by his ability to breathe life into a diverse group of characters. From protagonist Miles Roby to his irascible father Max, his hauntingly sad mother Grace, his nemesis Mrs. Whiting, his touching daughter Tick, and many more, we are treated to people described so vividly they come to life and seem like the people we might know and want to either hang out with or avoid at all costs if we lived in Empire Falls.

There are too many plot lines to detail, but they all are brought together nicely and no reader is left with unanswered questions thanks to an interesting epilogue.

All the problems of seeking a better life but being relegated to the blue collar life of a mill town whose mill has long closed, are embodied in Miles Roby, reluctant proprietor of the town's grill. In the opening pages he sees his teen-age daughter Tick walking home from school with a hunched back weighed down by her symbolic backpack representing all the problems she faces---the dissolution of her parents marriage, a stepfather she despises, a widening emotional gap with her mother, the dreaded loss of friends and social standing, and being coupled with the school's most tortured and disturbed student.

The story moves slowly but the characters are so richly drawn you will be totally engrossed and hard pressed to put this one down. When the story does reach its climax, there are plenty of shocks and surprises and a realization that life is not perfect and its flaws are with us forever to either cope with or be overwhelmed by.

The cast of characters in this book are living a blue collar life in a town called Empire Falls. Their town is in Maine, an old mill town, once a thriving place to be, but now its occupants struggle to make a living. It is at the grill where we meet Miles Roby, his daughter Tick, his brother David, his ex-wife Janine and his father Max...along with a colorful set of other people who frequent the restaurant.

Russo manages to tell this superb story through flashbacks and incredible characterization. It is a poignant and truly funny book which shows the nature of human folly. Every person we encounter has regrets, they've all made decisions and compromised themselves in one way or another. Their lives are all intertwined and we are taken on a journey filled with twists and turns that lead us to a true exploration of the human condition.

This was such an easy book to lose yourself in, at times I felt like I was in the grill, listening in on the conversations. The people of Empire Falls became real to me and I was sad to see them go.

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.

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.

I will admit that about halfway through Empire Falls, I put it away for a few days. Although fascinating in its nuance and delightful in its humor, it was beginning to plod (so I thought) and I began to wonder whether it quite deserved the prestiguous prize on its cover.

Little did I realize the expertise of its author. He knows exactly what he's doing, bringing a complex tale to a slow boil. When the fever of rumination breaks toward the end, when something big really does happen, the reader is that much more taken by it because Russo has done more than introduce the characters--he has brought you into their lives, into their heads, and you genuinely care about their fate. Every one of the citizens in Empire Falls is a real, complex, believable person. At least once I had to remind myself that this heartbreaking tale, so vividly funny and genuinely tragic, is a work of fiction.

That Russo teases humor from sadness in such a natural, graceful way would make The Empire Falls a remarkable book. What makes it literature is its relevance, its reality, the fact that it might as well be a true story.