Empire Falls

I loved Richard Russo’s Pulitzer-winning Empire Falls, a moving, brilliantly imagined and intensely satisfying novel about the slow death of a small town: Russo’s characters are as loveable and as exasperating as family – Nick Hornby
His natural grace as a storyteller is matched by his compassion for his characters – John Irving
Like Anne Tyler, Russo is interested in how people rub along; in kindness and responsibility; in cutting slack without being asked. In the Empire Grill he has created a place so involving that not only can you see and smell it, but you start to feel a bit left out of the gin rummy. Russo makes an enormous job of story-telling look effortless. He is, in all the best senses of the word, a natural * Sunday Times *
Richard Russo can write like Edith Wharton leavened with a touch of David Lodge * Economist *
Russo’s command of his story is unerring… He satisfies every expectation without lapsing into predictability, and the last section of the book explodes with surprises…One of the best novelists around * New York Times *
Another fine performance… This is a big novel with a full canvas of human passions. Russo, a humane and traditional teller of truths, sustains his story and his readers * Irish Times *
Russo writes with a warm, vibrant humanity * Washington Post *
The world of Empire Falls is at least distantly related to those of John Cheever’s Wapshot novels… an unpretentious master of fictional technique whose deeper wisdom expresses itself in the distinctive fallibility, decency, humor, and grace of the indisputably, irresistibly real people he puts on the page * Boston Globe *
Russo’s inimitable blend of Eudora Welty, Anne Tyler and Booth Tarkington, removed to declining New England and graced with surprises all his own, makes for terrific reading, fast, funny and illuminating * Chicago Tribune *

Richard Russo won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his fifth novel, Empire Falls. He is also the author of Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody’s Fool, Straight Man, Bridge of Sighs and That Old Cape Magic, as well as a collection of stories, The Whore’s Child; and a memoir, On Helwig Street. His original screenplay is the basis for Rowan Atkinson’s film Keeping Mum. He lives with his wife in Maine.

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