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Richard Russo Empire Falls ISBN 13: 9780786236510

Empire Falls - Hardcover

 
9780786236510: Empire Falls
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A New York Times Bestseller

The town of Empire Falls in Dexter County, Maine, has seen better days. For decades, in fact, it has gone from bad to worse. Its logging and textile enterprises have gone belly-up, and the once vast holdings of the Whiting clan now mostly amount to decrepit real estate. Miles Roby gazes over this ruined kingdom from the Empire Grill, a youthful opportunity that has become the albatross of his life. A decent man encircled by history and dreams, by echoing churches and abandoned mills, by the comforts and feuds provided by lifelong friends, Miles is also a patient, knowing guide to the hardscrabble nature of Empire Falls.

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Review:
Like most of Richard Russo's earlier novels, Empire Falls is a tale of blue-collar life, which itself 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 Roby, 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's psychological defects.

Miles does indeed have a tendency to take it on the chin. (At one point he alludes to his own "natural propensity for shit-eating.") 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 summarize 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 soupçon 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 alone--snappy and natural and efficiently poignant--is sufficient cause to put Empire Falls on the map. --Bob Brandeis

From the Inside Flap:
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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  • PublisherThorndike Press
  • Publication date2001
  • ISBN 10 0786236515
  • ISBN 13 9780786236510
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages864
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780375726408: Empire Falls

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780375726408
Publisher: Vintage, 2002
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9780099422273: Empire Falls

VINTAGE, 2006
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9780679432470: Empire Falls

Knopf, 2001
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9780307275134: Empire Falls

Vintage, 2005
Softcover

9780701162009: Empire Falls

KNOPF., 2001
Softcover

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