Empire Falls [Paperback]

Like most of Richard Russo's earlier novels, Empire Falls is a tale of blue-collar life, which 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 Robey, 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. 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 it to say that he touches on love and marriage, lust and loss and small-town economics, with more than a soupcon 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--snappy and natural and efficiently poignant--is itself sufficient cause to put Empire Falls on the map. --Bob Brandeis, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

" Rich, humorous, elegantly constructed . . . Easily Mr. Russo' s most seductive book thus far." - "The New York Times"
" Russo writes with a warm, vibrant humanity.... A stirring mix of poignancy, drama and comedy." "-- The Washington Post"
" Russo is one of the best novelists around." - "The New York Times Book Review"
" The history of American literature may show that Richard Russo wrote the last great novel of the 20th century." - "Christian Science Monitor"
" Nobody does small-town life better than Richard Russo." "- Atlanta Journal-Constitution"

A huge-hearted and wonderful novel by a master storyteller

Empire Falls, Maine: once a thriving hub of industry, this small town nestles in a bend of the vast and winding Knox River, and has always been the empire of the wealthy Whiting family. Now the last Mrs Whiting presides like a black widow spider over its declining fortunes. She harbours a grudge against her employee Miles Groby, who runs the Whiting-owned Empire Grill, but hopes one day to own it himself. Miles, gentle and hopeless, has other problems: his wife has run off with his worst customer, he frets about his adored teenage daughter, and his drunken father sponges off everyone.

As the novel builds to a shocking climax, Russo constantly surprises with characters who will disarm you, a plot with as many twists and falls as the Knox River itself, and an ending that will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

(20011227)

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

'His natural grace as a storyteller is matched by his compassion for his characters' John Irving

'Like Anne Tyler, Russo is interested in how people rub along; in kindness and responsibility; in cutting slack without being asked. In the Empire Grill he has created a place so involving that not only can you see and smell it, but you start to feel a bit left out of the gin rummy' Sunday Times

Empire Falls, Maine: once a thriving hub of industry, this small town nestles in a bend of the vast and winding Knox River, and has always been the empire of the wealthy Whiting family. Now the last Mrs Whiting presides like a black widow spider over its declining fortunes. She harbours a grudge against her employee Miles Groby, who runs the Whiting-owned Empire Grill, but hopes one day to own it himself. Miles, gentle and hopeless, has other problems: his wife has run off with his worst customer, he frets about his adored teenage daughter, and his drunken father sponges off everyone.

As the novel builds to a shocking climax, Russo constantly surprises with characters who will disarm you, a plot with as many twists and falls as the Knox River itself, and an ending that will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

'Richard Russo can write like Edith Wharton leavened with a touch of David Lodge' Economist

'One of the best novelists around' New York Times

'This is a big novel with a full canvas of human passions. Russo, a humane and traditional teller of truths, sustains his story and his readers' Irish Times

Also by Richard Russo: [jpegs of Bridge of Sighs; The Risk Pool; Nobody's Fool]

Richard Russo won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his fifth novel Empire Falls (made into a TV series starring Paul Newman, Ed Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Helen Hunt). He is also the author of Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody's Fool , Straight Man, Bridge of Sighs and That Old Cape Magic, as well as a collection of stories, The Whore's Child. His original screenplay is the basis for Rowan Atkinson's film Keeping Mum, with Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas. He has collaborated with Robert Brenton on the screenplays for Nobody's Fool (filmed with Paul Newman) and Twilight. He lives with his wife in Maine and in Boston. (20011227)