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Empire Falls
Jul. 1st, 2009 10:58 amEmpire Falls by Richard Russo: As I said in my last post, this book started out boring and remained boring. I considered putting it down after the first 100 or so pages, and I should have done so, but whatever--I persevered instead. The book is about Miles, a man who manages a diner in a small, rundown town. Not a whole lot happens (until late in the book, when a few dramatic developments appear out of left field); Russo focuses on Miles's relationships with his family members and on the town itself. But the relatively quiet plot is not what makes the book boring. It's boring because Russo's prose is absolutely styleless, and because he insists on explaining every last detail of everyone's thoughts and actions--even the thoughts and actions that he has already explained in detail in previous chapters. There's no room for ambiguity and no need for interpretation, so the reading experience becomes totally passive. And therefore boring.
Russo managed to create an interesting setting for his boring book. His depressed Maine town reminded me of some depressed western NY towns that I know, and I'm interested in the questions posed by places like that: What happened to those towns? Why did people choose those particular places to settle or to build factories? Why, now that the factories are closed, do some people stay? What will it take to make them finally leave? I was in Croghan, NY last week and saw for sale signs in front of five houses on three blocks of the main street. Where are they planning to go? That sort of stuff is worth thinking about and Russo has some insights on these topics, but, like most everything is the book, they are explained nigh unto death.
I was made uneasy by Russo's depictions of women in Empire Falls. The three main female characters are Miles's teenaged daughter, his ex-wife, and the rich widow of an industrialist who essentially controls the whole town. The teenage daughter is so undeveloped that she hardly counts--she functions more as a plot device than as an actual character. The rich widow is such a quintessential witch that it's almost funny: she's manipulative, cold, power-hungry, greedy, and even comes equipped with a vicious cat as her familiar. She's pretty awful, but so ridiculous that I could dismiss her pretty easily. Russo's portrayal of the ex-wife struck me as much more insidious. This woman is vapid, immature, stubborn, vain. She leaves Miles because he's such a sad sack, and Russo implies that her unhappiness and her desire for something better stem from selfishness, and her subplot seems designed to punish her for leaving her marriage. Russo is apparently using this character to demonstrate that mild dissatisfaction within marriage is far better than the awful choices that await women who leave their husbands.
Russo managed to create an interesting setting for his boring book. His depressed Maine town reminded me of some depressed western NY towns that I know, and I'm interested in the questions posed by places like that: What happened to those towns? Why did people choose those particular places to settle or to build factories? Why, now that the factories are closed, do some people stay? What will it take to make them finally leave? I was in Croghan, NY last week and saw for sale signs in front of five houses on three blocks of the main street. Where are they planning to go? That sort of stuff is worth thinking about and Russo has some insights on these topics, but, like most everything is the book, they are explained nigh unto death.
I was made uneasy by Russo's depictions of women in Empire Falls. The three main female characters are Miles's teenaged daughter, his ex-wife, and the rich widow of an industrialist who essentially controls the whole town. The teenage daughter is so undeveloped that she hardly counts--she functions more as a plot device than as an actual character. The rich widow is such a quintessential witch that it's almost funny: she's manipulative, cold, power-hungry, greedy, and even comes equipped with a vicious cat as her familiar. She's pretty awful, but so ridiculous that I could dismiss her pretty easily. Russo's portrayal of the ex-wife struck me as much more insidious. This woman is vapid, immature, stubborn, vain. She leaves Miles because he's such a sad sack, and Russo implies that her unhappiness and her desire for something better stem from selfishness, and her subplot seems designed to punish her for leaving her marriage. Russo is apparently using this character to demonstrate that mild dissatisfaction within marriage is far better than the awful choices that await women who leave their husbands.
