A wonderful picture of the way Maine is

Sunday, June 3, 2001

BOOK REVIEW: John Robinson

Richard Russo's "Empire Fall" is not a novel about Maine, it is a novel of Maine: its people, its history, its cultural attitudes and particular way of living.

It is an incredibly funny, deeply moving, yet strangely disturbing story about three generations of folk who live in the town of Empire Falls. It is about the end of the tight-knit family dynasties that once ruled the mill towns and laborers of central Maine.

The story revolves around Miles Roby, manager of the Empire Grill, who is waiting to inherit the business from Cindy Whiting, the richest woman in Empire Falls. Years earlier she made a promise to Miles that if he came home from college to run the grill he would inherit the premises.

But nothing in life is that easy. Miles' wife Janine has filed for divorce after 22 years without an orgasm; his disreputable father, Max, keeps stealing money from the cash register; his brother, David, lost the use of his arm in a car accident; and his 16-year-old daughter, Tick, looks like she's about to repeat the whole pattern.

Francine Whiting, her psychotic cat Timmy, her crippled daughter Cindy and a long line of suicidal Whiting men fill in the other half of the picture. Janine's mother, Beatrice, her new lover The Silver Fox, a small town cop named Jimmy Minty, the high school principal, two redundant Catholic priests and the voluptuous waitress Charlene round out the cast of characters.

For a reason that Miles cannot explain, Francine Whiting will not allow him to have a liquor license or expand the grill to make it profitable. In fact, it seems to Miles that the cold, aloof Mrs. Whiting enjoys watching him dance the edge of failure every month.

As Miles revisits their entire relationship over the course of the novel, he gradually discovers deep, hurtful secrets that mirror the decline of the mills and explain Mrs. Whiting's animosity toward his family.

In the middle of this wonderful picture of small town life, with its petty feuds and undying hatreds, Tick and her classmates are caught up in a senseless school shooting. Because the first 400 pages are so well written, the horror of the scene is palpable.

The reasons for the abrupt change of tone, pace and plot are never quite explained, but the novel eventually recovers from its own ambition by the last word.

Richard Russo lives in midcoast Maine and writes with great narrative detail. From local football games to empty bars, he writes as if he has lived every moment himself. In spite of the fact that his chapters are long, the writing careful, "Empire Falls" is a page turner. As one revelation leads to the next, it's hard to turn off the light at the end of a long work day.

A hundred years from now when future generations want to know how the people of Maine lived and died in the second half of the 20th century, they will not read the million-dollar horror stories of Stephen King, they will turn to Richard Russo.

John Robinson is a free-lance writer from Portland.

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