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by Richard Russo
In a word (or two or three): small town family drama--the things that
Pulitzers are made of
From Mr. Hipster:
For a book that meanders its way through
500 pages, Empire Falls sure is a hard book to put down.
It's stories about these magical, small New England towns that seem
to just capture nothing and everything at the same time. There's always
love and loss, tragedy and revelation, but most of all there is always
a cast of characters worthy of the mighty tress that were farmed to
create the paper that these tales are printed on. The characters in
this story are no exception. You have the evil, rich old lady. You
have the selfless, dying mother. You have the lousy, drunk wandering
father. And then in the middle of all of it you have Miles, a man
whose life is at a crossroads. If he were a cast member on The
Real World, he'd be that wimpy guy who just wants to be everybody's
friend (see Matt from the Hawaii season for a perfect example.) Sorry
to drag in horrible pop culture crapola to describe a character in
a Pulitzer-winning novel, but I'm a product of my generation. Anyway,
there is nothing groundbreaking about this book, it's just so filled
with well thought out characters that you feel like you know them
by the time the book wraps up. There are a few sections that are a
little--dare I say--cliched and/or unoriginal. I mean, we have a scene
right out of a Pearl Jam video for god's sake! This aside, I did enjoy
98% of the book, and would recommend it to people who enjoy a good
character study. Reading it though, I almost felt as if Russo was
pandering to Hollywood, purposely writing cinematic scenes that would
fit perfectly into a film script. I could see a good director turning
this into a nice, small indie film (hopefully they'll keep Lasse Hallstrom
from sprinkling his sleeping powder all over this one as well.)
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