Empire Falls (Book Review)

Empire Falls is a superb novel about Maine written by native Maine author Richard Russo. Here's a book that's not a bloodthirsty mobster saga, or a murder mystery, or a spy thriller. It's not loaded down with gratuitous sex or violence. It is instead a brilliantly conceived novel that combines humor with poignancy as it examines and comments upon our human condition. Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001.

Welcome to Empire Falls, a fictional small town in the fictional county of Dexter, in the real live state of Maine. Empire Falls is very typical of the small mill towns nestled alongside Maine's great rivers - the Kennebec, the Androscoggin, and the Penobscot. At river's edge (the fictional Knox River), there's the ubiquitous shirt factory and a textile mill, both long closed and boarded up, victims of the "new economy." Most of the small businesses along Empire Falls' main street are likewise abandoned; plywood has replaced plate glass in most of the storefront windows.

Meet some of the people who live in Empire Falls: Miles Roby, the book's protagonist... he's a genuinely nice guy. Early forties; a college graduate, but a man without a great deal of ambition. He's soon to be divorced from Janine, his wife of twenty years. Miles is the proprietor of the Empire Grill, a little "greasy spoon" that he runs on behalf of Mrs. C.B. Whiting, the owner. He hopes to inherit the eatery when Mrs. Whiting dies...

Janine Roby, Miles' "almost ex-," is trying hard to dump Miles as fast as she can. A "poster girl" for mid-life crisis, she's taken up with another man, even before her divorce from Miles is final. Her soon-to-be second husband is Walt Comeau, the "Silver Fox," a sixty-year old local "swinger" who owns the town's only fitness club. Since she and Walt have become an "item," Janine has dropped fifty or so pounds, rediscovered her libido, (something she thinks Miles has lost permanently), and has become hopelessly addicted to various forms of physical exercise...

Tick is Miles and Janine's teenage daughter. Probably a borderline anorexic. Filled with teenage angst, but a source of comfort to many of her likewise angst-ridden high school friends. She lives with her mother, whom she can't stand, and spends most of her free time working at the Empire Grill with Miles, whom she adores.

Max Roby is Miles' "sempty" (seventy) -year old father - a real deadbeat, if ever there was one. Max thinks nothing of stealing money from Father Tom, the senile retired Catholic priest, or from his own son for that matter. Max, along with Walt Comeau, is one of the great thorns in Miles'side.

Overseeing this cast of characters is Mrs. C.B. Whiting, the last in the line of fabulously wealthy, domineering Whitings that settled in Empire Falls and built the textile Mill and shirt factory. Mrs. Whiting, a septuagenarian, is as intellectually sharp and physically fit as ever. She tries to rule her self-proclaimed fiefdom with a "mailed fist inside a velvet glove..."

These and many other characters form part of the fabric of Empire Falls, a tiny dot on the central Maine landscape. A peaceful, bucolic little community comprised of the noble, the venal, the humble, the vain, the rich, the poor, the beggar, and the thief. A community soon to be tested by a sudden, unexpected, senseless act of violence...

I first read Empire Falls in 2001, shortly after it was published. I was drawn to it them because it was a novel about Maine written by a native Mainer. That fact alone intrigued me enough to buy a hardcover copy of the book. Empire Falls grabbed my attention from the very first page and held it for the next 500. I was indeed impressed!

I recently finished re-reading Empire Falls, and it was just as good the second time around as it was the first! The characters are just as real, the prose just as vivid, and the plot just as exciting as I remembered them to be from nine years ago. Empire Falls really is that good!

Empire Falls is definitely not an "action" novel. Readers aren't going to be bowled over by thrilling escapades involving heroes and villians. No, this novel is instead a book that introduces the reader to a group of ordinary people with ordinary fears, anxieties, hopes, and aspirations. You'll get to walk alongside them, sharing their struggles and frustrations; laughing with them when they find those tiny shreds of humor in their daily existence; commiserating with them in their sorrow, when tragedy strikes...

Two attributes of Empire Falls held my interest from first page to last: first, Russo writes with tremendous wit. Many of the scenes in Empire Falls are very funny indeed... not that "falling on the floor" funny, but witty, almost satirical. In some ways, very much like Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

The main thing that held my interest is Russo's accurate depiction of small town life in Maine. Russo's descriptions of the town of Empire Falls - with its red brick mill buildings dominating the skyline; the old, dilapidated houses; the rusty cars meandering down Main Street; the rusty old iron bridge forming the town's lifeline with the outside world - form powerful mental images of many of the towns in which I've actually lived, worked, and played. Russo's characters bear a striking resemblance to many people with whom I've associated over the years.

MY VERDICT: Empire Falls is a genuinely wonderful novel that's highly deserving of the Pulitzer Prize it won in 2001. It's rich in detail, literate, alternately funny and tragic, and a powerful statement about small town life in America. I think it's destined to become one of the enduring novels of our generation. Read and enjoy!!