Monday, May 4, 2009

Book 8 : Empire Falls - Richard Russo

I'd always loved to read as a kid, but after I dropped out of college my interest in books waned. 5 years ago I spent a few days in my aunt's home in northern California. She has bookcases in virtually every room and 1,000s of books in all. I hadn't read a book in probably 3 years when I stayed there, but one night I was having trouble sleeping and grabbed a book at random. The book I picked was Empire Falls and I sat up for 5 hours that night reading it.

Not only did this book make me fall in love with literature again, it was responsible for my goal to read all the Pulitzers. After reading this book the first time, I devoured everything that Russo had written, loving all of his work except Mohawk, his 1st book, whose story was re-told again much more compellingly in Nobody's Fool.

Over the years I re-read this book twice and made my brother, his wife and Sara read it. I recommended it to everyone I could think of, being convinced that it was one of the most accessible examples of award winning literature.

I decided to re-read it again this year, as I hadn't read it since I'd begun my 'official' Pulitzer reading goal. I was shocked at how disappointed I was.

The writing is trite. He writes from several different 1st person perspectives throughout the book and he does a terrible job writing women. It was written in 2000 and he has a 16 year old girl unironically calling her boyfriend a 'hunk' and feeling guilty after having held hands with him the movie theater.

There's also some weird internet stuff going on that was really glaring to me. I realize that in 2000 not nearly as many people had the internet as they do today. However, technology had advanced enough that he should have been able to do some simple research to avoid looking like a fool when he discusses, 'installing an e-mail server' on his computer and describing IMing as 'typing keyboard to keyboard'.

The story takes place in a former mill town in a small town in Maine. The town of Empire Falls has become impoverished and everyone is just trying to make ends meet. It's a fairly average story of an average family. However, with about 50 pages left Russo felt the need to insert this bizarre plot line involving a boy murdering his grandmother and then shooting up the local high school. It was really out of place and didn't serve the story well.

I don't know why I enjoyed this book so much the first time and not at all this time. It appears as though my tastes have changed.



6/10
YTD:
Books read : 8
Pages read : 2,166
Currently reading : Rabbit Redux - John Updike & Steal This Book - Abbie Hoffman

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