MixedPopMattersInterestingly enough, the town of Empire Falls is as much a character in this book as it is a setting. Or maybe it would be more precise to say that the town could also be seen as a kind of attire (which is interesting given the town’s chief source of prosperity). Through sparse bits of flashback and dialog, we piece together several decades of its history … All of this might get tiresome were it not for Russo’s ability to weave amusing subplots into the story. He does a very good job of tempering the serious subject matter with levity … Having said this, the book is nearly ruined near the end when a despicable teen-age character shows up at school with a gun and shoots a number of classmates. Not that this event is beyond the interest of literature, but that such a horrific event is treated as a mere subplot.
