Product Description

History and humanity flow through Empire Falls, Maine, like the strange flotsam washed up at the bend of the vast, slow-moving Knox River. The Whiting family, owners of the mills and the shirt factory, have sold out to a multinational. The Whiting men have invariably married women who make their lives a misery. C.B. Whiting was no exception. Now his wife, Francine, the last Mrs Whiting, presides like a black widow spider over the declining fortunes of the town. Its hub is the Empire Grill, with a view down the avenue to the abandoned mill and factory. Miles Roby, a gentle, funny loser runs the grill and hopes one day to own it. Meantime, though, his wife has run off with his worst customer, he's anxious about his adored teenage daughter and his one-handed brother, his incorrigible father sponges off everyone, the police have Miles in their sights, and Mrs Whiting has her own plans for him. Here is a huge-hearted and magnificent novel by a master storyteller, marked by comic genius and a love of humankind with all its flaws and foibles. As it builds inexorably to a shocking climax, Russo constantly surprises with characters who creep under your guard to disarm you, a plot with as many twists and falls as the Knox River itself, and an ending that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25088 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Like most of Richard Russo's earlier novels, Empire Falls is a tale of blue-collar life, which itself increasingly resembles a kind of high-wire act performed without the benefit of any middle-class safety nets. This time, though, the author has widened his scope, producing a comic and compelling ensemble piece. There is, to be sure, a protagonist: fortysomething Miles Roby, proprietor of the local greasy spoon and the recently divorced father of a teenage daughter. But Russo sets in motion a large cast of secondary characters, drawn from every social stratum of his depressed New England mill town. We meet his ex-wife Janine, his father Max (another of Russo's cantankerous layabouts), and a host of Empire Grill regulars. We're also introduced to Francine Whiting, a manipulative widow who owns half the town--and who takes a perverse pleasure in pointing out Miles' psychological defects.

Miles does indeed have a tendency to take it on the chin. (At one point he alludes to his own "natural propensity for shit-eating.") And his role as Mr Nice Guy thrusts him into all sorts of clashes with his not-so-nice contemporaries, even as the reader patiently waits for him to blow his top. It would be impossible to summarise Russo's multiple plot lines here. Suffice to say that he touches on love and marriage, lust and loss and small-town economics, with more than a soupçon of class resentment stirred into the broth. This is, in a sense, an epic of small and large frustrations:

After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.

Yet Russo's comedic timing keeps the novel from collapsing into an orgy of breast-beating, and his dialogue alone--snappy and natural and efficiently poignant--is sufficient cause to put Empire Falls on the map. --Bob Brandeis, Amazon.com

From the Publisher
A huge-hearted and wonderful novel by a master storyteller.

About the Author
Award-winning novelist Richard Russo is the author of Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody's Fool and Straight Man. He has collaborated with Robert Benton on the screenplays for Nobody's Fool and Twilight. He lives in Maine.

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Customer Reviews

A hugely satisfying read
This was the first book I've read by Richard Russo, but I'm determined it won't be my last. I savoured every moment of it - some parts I even read twice. For the most part, the book carries the reader along out of curiosity: the characters are somehow real, whole, familiar. I kept reading about their everyday life just because I felt I wanted to know what would happen between them all. I wasn't gripped by the storyline, I was gripped by the characters and the atmosphere, it felt like I was there with them. It's only in the final chapters of the novel that the storyline takes a huge leap into the dramatic, and suddenly you realise that Russo had been building to this all along. There is nothing predictable about this book. It is beautifully engineered and satisfying to read - and entirely worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it won. Really, really recommended.

Well worthy of Pulitzer status
Dont be put off by the Pulitizer status - this doesnt mean that its longwinded and dull (!). This book is easy to read, a joy to read, and completely unputdownable. After reading, I was thinking about the characters for so long, that they have become family members! This was the first Russo book I have read and I have a feeling that I will plough my way through all his books in a very short space of time. Atmospheric, joyous, funny, heartbreaking, and with a climatic ending that you just dont see coming (or dont want to see coming) this is the perfect book. Lives up to and beyond its hype.

Outstanding!
Having read several prize winning books this year, I was very keen to partake of the Pulitzer Prize Winner. It does not disappoint. An outstanding book, that provides a wonderful insight into many of the characters in the book, and not just the focal character, by allowing the narrator to speak for each of them individually. By getting in the heads of other individuals, you begin to get a better understanding of why people do what they do, when it is not always totally logical to you why they do. You will experience every emotion as you read the book, including, but not limited to; happiness, sadness, sympathy and empathy. A great book which is accessible to all types of readers.