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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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