"Empire Falls": Characters you love to hate

"Empire Falls" by Richard Russo won the Pulitzer Price for Fiction in 2002 and I just read it a couple of months ago. It was something I always wanted to read. I thought it was supposed to take place in New York - a combination of "Empire State" and "Niagara Falls," I guess. But, nope, it takes place in small-town Maine after the mills have left and hope with them. The Pulitzer Prize book description provides a good summary.

Miles Roby is the 40-something owner of the Empire Grill who struggles with the bar owner, the wicked Mrs. Whiting who is tight-fisted, controlling and owns most of the town's land. She toys with Miley and his dreams in an awful cat-and-mouse way. At least four or five times during the book, I wanted to shake Miles hard and yell: "Get control of your life! Talk back to Whiting. Get the bar from her - or- for god's sake, leave town with your teenaged daughter. Forget the town you've lived in most of your life and flee."

But of course he doesn't. He's a persevering kind of guy. At one point, however, Mrs. Whiting crosses the final line, puts the final straw on Miles' camel's back, and Miles rebels. He secretly begins to open a restaurant and bar across the street from the Empire Grill. He shows his independence and his grit. Many of the townspeople come to his aid and back him, even after he gets into a punch fight with a corrupt cop. That cop is some character as well; he always thought Miles looked down on him, but Miles never really did.

So, for the wealth of weird characters in this book, including Miles' unreliable boozy father who makes off to Key West with the retired Alzheimers-stricken town priest, I had a good time reading it. And I can see why it won a Pulitzer, which is preferable given for a novel about American life. I'd never known that before, but the web site says that it is given for "distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life."

I recommend Empire Falls. It takes a little while to get going, but it's worth it in the end. Have a hanky ready.