Review: "Empire Falls" by Richard Russo

I’ve circled it for the past few years, but now I have finally read Richard Russo’s most famous and most acclaimed novel Empire Falls, and I can say that it is truly his best work: a culmination of his tried and true themes, his narrative ability and the grand yet quaint empathy he has for his characters, especially the misfits. Russo just might be the best writer living today at conveying the lives of small town American folks, people who just barely get by on dreams for the future of simply what little they have. They tend to fight, be in dire straits financially yet always seem to live their lives with dignity grace and more than a little humor, both highbrow and lowbrow. From books like Mohawk to his Two Fool novels, Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool, Russo is a master at these kinds of stories, that are warm without being cloying, sweet without being saccharine, deep in pathos, disappointment and aggression but always in ways that are recognizable and undeniably human. Those themes are on full display here in the fictional Maine town of Empire Falls, where everyone knows everyone, but the town’s foundations seems built on an intricately balanced collection of secrets and half-truths. Someone who seems to be the most burdened by the town’s framework is Miles Roby; the head cook at the Empire Grill. A man of great self-sacrifice but not a lot of self-awareness, at the beginning of the novel he is going through a painless yet exhausting divorce from his wife Janine, he has a shaky relationship with his daughter Tick and he is constantly under the thumb from the covertly cruel Francine Whiting, who seems to own every valuable piece of everything in Empire Falls. Russo is an expert at deepening the complexity of his narratives by having the perspective switch constantly, so the town and the people in it becoming integral to each other and to the story. There is Walt Comeau, the man Janine is leaving miles for; an ageing meathead who owns a fitness center in town and gives Janine orgasms that Miles could not. There is Miles brother David, a recovering addict with more wisdom and insight than Miles could ever have and Miles’ dad Max, a surly old leech with a heart of gold. There is Jimmy Minty, the power hungry cop with an axe to grind with Miles and a rock-lined path to the position of chief of police, who becomes more pivotal and more scary as the book moves toward a climax that was surprising for someone like Russo but pulled off in brilliant fashion that was never tawdry or exploitative. There is a certain comfort that comes with reading a Russo book, even one that is not very good. It washes over you as you slowly move towards an end that is always well crafted and eye opening. You know you are in the gentle hands of someone who knows what they are doing better than anyone else, and nowhere in his oeuvre is that more apparent than in this book.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Everybody's Fool" by Richard Russo

I don’t know what Richard Russo just did with Everybody’s Fool, but I’ve got to say that I really like it. A direct sequel to Nobody’s Fool, what I feel is Russo’s best book; this one just might be his most entertaining work. It has all the hallmarks I have come to love from his previous novel: a cozy yet realistic setting, humor mixed with heaping amounts of pathos and an overall down home dignity he injects into every character or situation. What makes this book so great, and what really took me by surprise, is that it takes these aforementioned qualities and puts them in the framework of a quasi-thriller. There are no supernatural elements, and the level of menace is surely not as high as in the work of Stephen King (who I thought of quote a bit during this book’s most harrowing scenes), but there is a great amount of suspense in this story that took me off guard. It may be a bit too much for some readers who come to Russo for his warmth instead of his narrative skill, but I felt it added quite a bit to the story’s human element: it made it seem like there was something at stake here, it added a great deal of urgent mystery mixed in with the usual Russo setting and quirks. It is clear from the book’s title as it relates to the original that this is a book in opposition to Nobody’s Fool, or it is rather the other side of the coin. It not only deals extensively with Sully, the tough, no nonsense protagonist of the first book, but really, it is more about Officer Doug Raymer, now Chief Raymer, who Sully punched in the first book after he fired his gun at him for driving on the sidewalk. Time has past since then, but it does not take place in the present day, giving the book a ghost of time’s past vibe. Sully, sporting a bum ticker, has been given only a few years to live, and after a windfall, he is determined to make the least of it. Raymer, reeling from the death of his wife, is questioning his skills as Chief, since he is aware of his reputation as the town’s resident fuck up. The book takes place over a few days, and has a few characters who are holdovers from the previous book, such as Carl Roebuck, whose punishment for his cheating ways is a urinary tract infection that has left him temporally impotent, Rub, Sully’s best friend, whose sad sack ways have not changed, and Ruth, the woman Sully had an affair with, his shaken by the arrival of her ex son-in-law Roy Purdy, who hides his psychopathic tendencies behind a veneer changed ways. Purdy’s story is where the book’s more frightening passages come from, with scenes of violence that make the spiral notebook nose mutilation in Straight Man rather tame. But this story does it’s best to be lighthearted and empathetic, and it succeeds rather warmly, even though I have qualms with the ending, and the questions it leaves and unspoken covert betrayal it finds itself a part of. Like all Russo book, this felt like a journey by the end, but not a journey on foot, but a journey through the truths and untruths of the human heart.

Rating: 5/5