Rating: 
Summary: Yawn
Review: awful. boring. unhumorous. How did this win a Pulitzer? wish I never bought it.
Rating: 
Summary: A deeply satisfying story with characters worth caring for
Review: On the surface this is a book about the people from an old mill town hanging on to the threads of what used to be an understandable and simple life. But underneath this layer is the story of people struggling to reconcile their youthful dreams and aspirations with the tough realities that face them as they age (the forces of nature and a changing world as well as their own shortcomings). A deeply satisfying story with complex characters worth caring about.
Rating:
Summary: "I was born in a small town..."
Review: Ok, first with the criticisms:
Yes, some developments are overdone and can be seen coming a mile away. And it's also true that the book is wordy and complex. Finally, the ending does disappoint just a bit.Nonetheless, this book rocks! I read Russo's "Straight Man" a few years ago and enjoyed it, but it wasn't a book that stayed with me. "Empire Falls" will stay with me because the characters just ring so true. I am another reviewer who grew up in a small town and left for college in the city. Unlike Miles, I never went back (except to visit briefly). I'm from Montana, but it seems a small town is a small town. An author who can create so many fleshed-out, believable characters is something rare. I give this book my highest recommendation. Oh, and I also loved "The Corrections," though many reviewers seem to view the two novels as an "either-or" proposition. Both are great books about people who feel real.
Rating:
Summary: Russo 's Poignant Tale of Small Town Life Is Rewarding Read
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Are they just giving Pulitzers away?
Review: While I'd never read a book by Richard Russo before this, I can't say I feel compelled to read any of his other works after reading Empire Falls. While the first hundred pages or so introduced some interesting characters, the next several hundred pages were painfully slow, and I became progressively impatient with the characters and the plot for the next several hundred pages, as I awaited the novel's predictable ending. Eventually the ending came, and I was glad when it did.
Rating:
Summary: Realist fiction at its epic best
Review: A completely believable and somewhat satirical epic about the blue-collar inhabitants of a fictional town in Maine, "Empire Falls" is one of those novels that pulls you into another world and doesn't let you go until the very end (causing me to miss my subway stop twice this week). Steeped in the realist tradition of Sinclair Lewis's "Main Street," Russo's tour de force calls to mind Joyce Carol Oates (especially "Them" and "Broke Heart Blues") and the neglected Ernest Hebert (whose novels are also set in small-town New England). Like his realist predecessors, Russo masterfully renders several disparate perspectives, he flawlessly records cafe conversation and barroom banter, and he expertly creates characters who are both familiar and convincing. In addition, he so successfully distracts the reader with red-herring "secrets" (for example, Charlie Mayne, whose identity you are meant to figure out right away) that you won't expect the approaching, inevitable crescendo that provides the book's climax. But the greatest strength of "Empire Falls" is not its plot--mesmerizing as it is--but its characters. The disillusioned and unmotivated Miles Roby serves as the center of the local goings-on and, to some extent, the town's limited social life. His adolescent daughter Tick provides Miles with his only source of hope; it's been a long time since I've read a novel that so effortlessly captures the high school experience. And I will never forget some of Empire Falls's more colorful residents: Max Roby (Miles's father), a slovenly "public nuisance" and scam artist; the town's matriarch Francine Whiting, whose intelligence and humor defy her caricature as the local witch; Walt Comeau, an annoying, aging bodybuilder who runs the area's gym; Father Tom, a senile priest who calls his longtime parishioners "peckerheads." They all are recognizable types, but Russo infuses each of them with lives of their own. Satirical without being condescending, warm without being sentimental, authentic without being predictable "Empire Falls" captures perfectly small-town life in the modern world.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful book
Review: This is a very interesting novel about a small town in Maine and the interesting cast of characters who live there. I loved every part of this book except I was mildly dissatisfied with the ending. I didn't feel that the motives behind Mrs. Whiting's actions were really explained. And the fate of the town is kind of left up in the air, I felt. Still, this is a book well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: It bored me to sleep
Review: How many times can a writer use the phrases "After all" and "of course" in a 500 page book and still win a Pulitzer? Apparently, about 500. The writing in this book is lethally dull, the characters are uninteresting and the plot limps along until the very end when it commits suicide. Puh-leeze.
Rating: 
Summary: Great read but flawed
Review: A+ for the pace. You won't put this down.
A+ for simple and accessible prose.
A+ for making secondary characters come to life.
A+ for humor. I laughed outloud a number of times within 10 minutes of picking it up. B- for consistency. Logical flaws and errors. Miles couldn't both be working at the Empire Grill during college summers as it says at book's onset and working in Rhode Island at Pete's parents' place. Horace can't be both excessively polite and insulting to Walt unless the author provides more nuance to his character. Other small flaws that you think the author and editor missed.
C for originality in characters. You'll care about them and want to know what happens to them, but is there a single one who isn't a stereotype? The computer nerd, the gay priest, the sponge-drunk father, the college dropout, the wife who leaves her blue-collar husband for a bigger wallet and sexual fulfillment in her 40s? At times "Empire Falls" reminded me of "The Shipping News" as they are both tales of blue-collar bumblers who are left by their wives. Overall: B+ - A Pulitzer Prize winner in the age of Hollywood. Entertaining, it is. Fine literature, it ain't. It's like Updike without the literary style or masterful metaphors.
Rating:
Summary: Empire Falls
Review: I loved it! A real page turner about life in a mill town. Characters are as real as can be!
A must read!
| 
