Empire Falls
Richard Russo
Read it in paperback
at 483 pages.
My fourth Pulitzer
of the year saw me reading Empire Falls by Richard Russo.
Richard Russo
attempts to convey, with great detail, the struggle of a floundering Maine town
from the vantage point of its many citizens.
The town itself, as the title indicates, is named Empire Falls. While previously a boom town textile power
house, over time the textiles produced were off shored or simply moved
elsewhere leaving the town down the straits of slow economic collapse. Empire Falls exists in the shadow of the
textile industry, its main street terminates at the site of the old factory and
most of the buildings that line main were built in the same era as the mill
itself. Empire Falls tells the story of
a small town in decline and the generational bond that exists from grandfather,
to children, and then grandchildren.
For the point of
this review, I will skip going into depth on the characters, motives, and
general plots. It really isn't important
to the review, despite being rich and detailed.
They really are the fabric of the book and Russo does an excellent job
with all of them. Russo demonstrates
some high talent character creation in this book.
When I first started
reading this book I was unsure what it was about (which is how I have been
jumping into almost all of the Pulitzers this year) and after a few chapters in
I decided to look it up (on Goodreads) and see how it had done. Surprise, my mother had read it to, and rated
it pretty standard, a flat 3/5 on Goodreads deficient scale. When I asked her why so low she couldn't
really give me an answer, but then I got to the back of the book and I
understood. As vast and wonderful as the
characters portrayed by Mr. Russo are, the ending was less than
fulfilling. In fact there really isn't
an ending at all. While the characters
and their interactions fuel the plot, there isn't a lot of closure for you as a
reader, despite the 483 page count listed in my edition. I didn't need to end in any specific way but
the end left me wondering why I had invested in the 483 pages to begin
with. This dramatically effects my
rating of the book, and not for the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment