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empire falls
Empire Falls
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.17
Your Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375726408
ISBN: 0375726403
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2002-04-12
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 2002-04-12
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Reviews:
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With Empire Falls Richard Russo cements his reputation as one of America’s most compelling and compassionate storytellers.
Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good, captivating read.
Comment: Richard Russo's Empire Falls was an engrossing, if not enjoyable read.
Part of my interest was undoubtedly because I once lived in Maine, where the story is set. Maine is a unique place, and Russo nails its forlorn atmosphere. The story simmers all the more for having this cold, economically depressed environment as its backdrop. If you've spent time there, the book will transport you back.
But I recommend Empire Falls most of all because it captures a certain texture of the relationships between family members. The responsibilities that exist between parent and child, child and parent are laid bare in subtle twists of the lead characters' lives. There is also tremendous drama in the story, but that drama serves mostly to support the character development that is the centerpiece of the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed in this book.
Comment: I was so looking forward to reading a Richard Russo book. I had heard great things about him from friends about his other books like the "Bridge of Sighs," "Straight Man" and "Nobody's Fool." Many here have written he is quick-witted while effortlessly making a great turn of the phrase with several meanings behind it.
Well, unfortunately, I didn't get that from his so-called Pulitzer Prize winning book, "Empire Falls." First of all, the lead character Miles wasn't compelling at all. I never felt comfortable with him and I wasn't sure what Russo was trying to do. Was I to feel sorry for Miles, or was I so feel contempt for a man, who though good, was a mamby-pamby.
And although Russo chose to write the book in third person, Russo wasn't sure if it should be third person limited or omniscient. What I mean by this is that on one hand we as readers learned about the characters and let them have us understand what they were feeling and thinking (limited third person). On the other hand, Russo decided to inject his personal philosophical views projected through the characters in awkward places, mainly coming from Miles or Tick and even to a lesser extent Janine.
I can usually read a 470+ page book in a week, but this book took me seven weeks to finish, because it just wasn't interesting enough. The plot was not existent and did not come together until late in Part Four. Then I felt it was a rush to the finish line to tie up all the preposterous lose ends between Miles, Charlie Mayne (Whiting), his mother Grace, John Voss, Mrs. Whiting, Cindy Whiting and even Max.
In sum, I found this book very disappointing. I gave it 3 stars, but really wanted to give it 2.5 stars. I think 2 stars would have been too harsh, because Russo is a fine writer, but I just don't get what the Pulitzer committee saw in this book except for a variation on school violence (done better in many other books) and a small town environment (done MUCH better by Annie Proulx and John Yates) of a crumbling North East town and the hanger-ons just trying to make sense of their existence; thus the double entendre of "EMPIRE FALLS." It just didn't do it for me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, to Say the Least
Comment: Russo easily manages the difficult task of creating a town and populating it with "real" people, but he does the narrative a tremendous disservice with a major rote story line. The introduction of an abused teenager who goes on to kill a classmate, a teacher and the principal betrays the novel. Not only does it reflect a lack of imagination, but it fails to move the characters along the natural line of progression Russo had outlined until that point. If deus ex machina is your thing, you may not find this twist disruptive. I would have preferred the characters to find redemption or falter just short of it through their own actions rather than find the 460+ pages that preceded this shift were read in vain.
Note: Russo needed a mechanism to get his protagonist Miles to Martha's Vineyard so that he could he could have his epiphany. I suppose a psychopathic teenager is an easy way to create that path, but that isn't the one I expect from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Two stars given only because of the quality of the writing and the depth of exploration of the relationships we have with ourselves, our family and friends, the towns in which we live and, critically, expectations -- those we have for ourselves and that others have for us.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful
Comment: On the surface this is a book about an average guy who is stuck in a rut in an average small town. But when you delve deeper, you see that the book is about how pivotal choices and events shape who we are and where we end up in life. The characters in this book are memorable, realistic, and well developed. They are masterfully woven together to create an engaging story. However, the story moves slowly because there are a lot of necessary details to the story. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick, entertaining read that requires no thought. Much like real life, some parts of the story were humorous while others were tragic and sad.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Readable
Comment: Life in a derelict New England milltown. Readable? Yes, but not mesmerizing. Hard to argue with the Pulitzer Prize, but, frankly, the characters were weak-kneed and not particularly likeable; kept hoping someone would show a little spunk but it didn't happen.
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