I am now on to Empire Falls. This happens to be a Pulitzer Prize winner and already (1 chapter in) I'm totally diggin it. Interestingly, Russo reads like a Fannie Flagg book (compliments) in the way he makes his characters seem quaint/quirky in a small town wish-I-lived-there way. This one's about Miles Roby, the forty-ish proprietor of the local greasy spoon and the recently divorced father of a teenage daughter (queerly named "Tick" - I haven't read yet why that is). In addition, there is a long list of secondary characters all living life in a run-down, depressed, small New England mill town (in Maine) where every one's life seems to clash with each other. Much is touched on by Russo in this novel including love, lust, loss, economic frustrations and of course out of reach dreams. Pretty much what we all seem to deal with every day in our every day lives. I'm already loving this book and will certainly let you know the outcome.
Update: Okay, so...I finished Empire Falls. Loved it! What a good storyteller Richard Russo is. The characters were so full of life and the main character was so real and I felt such...sympathy and, yet I don't know...the author just instilled in the reader such a sense of anger FOR Miles (the main character). I wanted to jump into the novel and kick all the asses of all the people that were doing him wrong and making such a fine man question his own goodness! A writer can't do wrong when his words make you want to move to Maine and find a greasy diner to waitress in, hoping that the short order cook just happens to be a man named Miles Roby. Read it...I think you'll understand.
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