Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful book with a forced ending
Review: Almost to the end this novel is one or Russo's best, with one of his most appealing protagonists, one of his best-drawn comic old pensioners, and a complex structure that plays in Faulknerian fashion with time within narrow confines of place. Then it all blows apart, in about thirty-five pages of conclusion that substitute cinematic 'action' and a forced relevance to recent events for the character and situation and internal development that he's best at. It left me wondering why. Perhaps to make it more palatable to Hollywood, as a previous reviewer suggested? I'm bitterly disappointed, because most of this book is even better than the Russo book I like best, The Risk Pool, and certainly more ambitious than any of his previous novels. Perhaps he should do as Fowles did in The Magus, and retool the book for a second version. In any case, he should replace the baldly sensationalist, topical ending---or simply delete it. Alas.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Read
Review: This is a great read, with characters so vividly brought to life, you'll feel you've known them all your life. Mr. Russo has the wonderful ability to tell a story with adding humorous asides that will often leave you chuckling out loud.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow Burn
Review: I almost went to the last chapter in this novel. Slow all the way, mediocre characters, not much interest in any of them with the exception of the father and his jaunt with the old priest.
Rating: 
Summary: I didn't want to finish this book!
Review: This was the first time in my life that I purposely kept putting the book down rather than finishing it. I didn't want it to end. I felt almost like I lived in that sleepy Maine town, and I wasn't ready to leave.
Russo does a fantastic job creating characters that make you feel - anger, disgust, annoyance - whatever it is, but you felt something reading this book.
I really liked Miles, and I found him to be a very realistic, sympathetic main character. His relationships with his dead mother, his daughter, his ex-wife and his brother were complicated and realistic.
I fell in love with this book. Not only because it was well written, which it was, but because I felt like each time I put the book down, time stopped in Empire Falls and waited for me to return. It was like the characters froze and when I picked the book back up, they came back to life.
This book is about finding out about yourself and your history - and realizing how both shape you.
What a great effort by a great writer!!
Rating:
Summary: Getting To Know A Town
Review: Miles, David, and Max. Grace. Tick and Bea and John. Francine. Cindy, Otto, and Honus. Zach. Justin, Candace, Doris, Cindy, and Buster. Janine. Charlene and Jimmy and Horace. Dawn and Peter. Fathers Mark and Tom. Charlie. Charlotte. And The Silver Fox.In no particular order, (except for Miles being primary) these are the people you come to know. One might think you either get lost in this plethora of characters- or they are too one-dimensional to ever really ever get to know them. But you'd be wrong to think that. Russo does an impeccable job painting the colorful portrait of Empire Falls. His writing is comedic, yet the story painful. The flashbacks (written in a somewhat difficult to read italics), at first a bit confusing, add a layer to the book that illuminates its ironies and destinies. I thoroughly enjoy stories about nothing, but for those of you that do not, keep reading. This is not just a story about the internal clock of an depressed town, though it might seem so at the beginning. The characters and story become even more complex. I have read many books that I have loved, but this is truly, a book I could not put down. This book is many things, and it will appeal to readers with many different preferences.
Rating:
Summary: An okay novel
Review: This is a little cliched and predictable, but is an entertaining read. The characterisation is, however, very good.
Rating:
Summary: highly enjoyable
Review: The characters were engaging and as the story progressed I couldn't put the book down. I do agree with another reviewer that some scenes seemed a bit obvious, and I grew impatient, especially as the tempo picked up, with the digressions or flashback chapters. But all of these chapters were vital to the plot and to what I thought was a theme of the novel - that our childhood and family history have a significant impact on the progress of our lives. Miles Roby tends to simply drift along with the current of his life, until he begins to understand his family's past and the forces that are at work in shaping his life. Only then can he begin to take some control over his life.
Rating:
Summary: MASTERPIECE!!! WELL DESERVED PULITZER WINNER!!!
Review: If you read one book this year, you need to read EMPIRE FALLS. Russo has really captured the essence of "everday" people. He brilliantly relates the story of Miles Roby, proprietor of the Empire Grill and the various colorful characters who grace Roby's life and establishment in a town, once a prosperous industrial community, now fallen into decay. But the working people of Empire Falls eke out a living the best they can in hopes a brighter future lay ahead. Laugh out loud humor, at times, tragic at others. This is one book you don't want to miss. Kudos to the Pulitzer committee for recognizing this wonderful writer!!
Rating:
Summary: Lessons in history, social studies and other yarns
Review: Having never read a Russo book (though I had seen movies based on his books), being a bit put off by the daunting length of his small town meanderings, I picked up this book after it won the Pulitzer prize, more out of curiosity why this tome wiped out other books I considered done-deal winners than out of urge to read for pleasure's sake. Like so many of Richard Russo's characters' bent toward making bad decisions I now admit I join those ranks. This book is a terrific read. Russo has earned his laurels as one of the better storytellers writing today, and if the Pulitzer seeks out books that focus on and dissect American life, then this book more than justifies the award. EMPIRE FALLS may be a mythical town, but Russo creates such a well documented history in his prologue, italicized intervening chapters, and epilogue that this small town in Maine becomes wholly beliveable. The span of character types touch every step of a class system denied by most as non-existent and in doing so Russo makes us explore motivations and explanations of why we all act out our lives the way we do. The amazing gift of this writer is his subtle way of introducing a character as part of a scene, merely mentioning his/her presence at the moment, and later returning with a whole history of how that seemingly "supporting cast" person plays a major role in the unfolding of the grand kaleidoscope of a story that is Empire Falls. He creates characters so well that they are instantly recognizeable when they enter a new development in the story, in a way that makes the reader continually say "Aha!", "Of course", as the story unfolds. By the end of the book the people of Empire Falls are so well defined that they have become indelible presences in our minds. While Russo doesn't bother with word painting or poetic glissandos about the settings or the atmosphere of nature that I usually treasure in other writers, his ability to capture small town claustrophobia is probably the best being written today. EMPIRE FALLS catches you in a net and doesn't let you go until, wonder of wonders, you notice you have just turned the last page of this 500 page tome. And I have to admit I have been missing the boat for years in not being caught up by Richard Russo. Congratulations on your well deserved Pulitzer!
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not Great
Review: While Empire Falls has a lot of things to its credit -- an interesting plot with unexpected turns, a detailed and rich view of Maine, and some good characterizations -- especially the main character, Miles Roby, and his daughter, Tick -- I felt the book dragged at times and the italicized flashbacks I found tiresome and overdone.
I also thought that the more minor characters relied too much on type and offered few surprises. I found myself especially annoyed with the characterization of Miles' ex-wife as a shrill, self-obsessed woman who only changes at the very end of the book after disaster and then more disaster strikes her, and of the even more minor characters such as the waitress, who is more characterized by her large breasts than anything else, though she is referred to so often through out the book that one expects more. Finally, I didn't like the end at the school -- but I don't want to spoil it so I won't say more than I was disappointed by what Russo with the 'troubled teen' character, John Voss.
But that aside, the location is truly brought to life and the atmosphere of Empire Falls Maine is well captured. And in the main characters of Tick and Miles Roby, there is an interesting journey to follow, even if the rest of the characters served more to add to the atmosphere than as real people.
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