Where to Start with Richard Russo: A Reading Guide

Richard Russo (born 1949 in Johnstown, New York) is an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter whose work is set primarily in small mill towns in the northeastern United States — towns like the one he grew up in, which lost their industrial purpose in the decades following World War II. He is the author of eight novels, of which Empire Falls (2001) is the most widely celebrated, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2002. He also wrote the screenplay for Nobody’s Fool (1994) and Empire Falls (2005), both of which were adapted for screen. He taught for many years before the success of his fiction allowed him to write full-time.

Where to Start: Empire Falls (2001)

Russo built Empire Falls around a dying mill town in Maine and a protagonist too decent to leave it — a novel that earned the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for its precision about the texture of economic decline in post-industrial America. Empire Falls opens with a brief history of the town: how the textile mill came, how it flourished, how the Whiting family acquired it, and how Francine Whiting still controls everything in a town whose mills have been closed for decades. The history is told with the precision of someone who has watched exactly this process in other towns, and it establishes the novel’s central concern before Miles Roby is even introduced: what happens to the people who stay in a place after the reason for the place has left?

Miles Roby is Russo’s most fully realised portrait of a particular American type: the decent man who has confused accommodation with virtue. Miles is genuinely good — patient with his difficult ex-wife, protective of his daughter, loyal to his employees, honest in his dealings with Mrs. Whiting — and his goodness is also his problem. He has been waiting for things to resolve themselves for so long that waiting has become his mode of being. The novel is interested in what it costs to be a good man in a specific way — the specific cost of patience as a life strategy — without being unsympathetic to Miles’s goodness or to the circumstances that shaped it.

The town itself is as fully realised as any character. Russo maps Empire Falls with the intimacy of a writer who has spent years thinking about how these places work: the social hierarchies that persist after the economic rationale for them has collapsed, the way the mill’s absence continues to organise the town’s identity, the specific relationships between the old money that owns things and the people who work for it. Mrs. Whiting — the widow who owns the town and dispenses or withholds patronage according to private logic — is a figure who would seem archaic in a novel set anywhere else but is entirely plausible in this specific town.

The secondary characters fill the town convincingly: Miles’s father Max, an itinerant painter with an irresponsible charm; David, his brother and restaurant partner; the various regulars of the Empire Grill whose rhythms constitute the texture of small-town daily life. The violence at the novel’s end arrives from outside this texture, from a direction the town had not been attending to — which is part of Russo’s point.

Why Empire Falls Is the Ideal First Book

For a reader new to Richard Russo, Empire Falls is the ideal first book because it is his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece and the fullest expression of his distinctive gifts, the warm humor, the rich characterization, and the affectionate, clear-eyed portrait of small-town American life. Empire Falls follows the manager of a diner in a declining mill town in Maine and the web of family, history, and community around him, in a richly peopled, funny, and deeply human novel. As an entry point it is ideal, for it is his most celebrated work and a perfect example of his warm, humane, and richly characterized fiction. It welcomes the newcomer with its compelling characters, its warmth and humor, and its emotional depth, drawing the reader into his distinctive world. It is his masterpiece and the one that best represents his gifts, so the new reader encounters Russo at his finest. For the newcomer, then, Empire Falls is the natural and ideal starting point.

What to Expect as a New Reader

As a new reader, you can expect Empire Falls to be a warm, humane, and richly characterized novel of small-town life. You can expect a vivid setting, for the novel is set in a declining mill town in Maine, rendered with affection and clear-eyed honesty. You can expect rich characterization, for Russo peoples his novel with memorable, fully realized, and deeply human characters. You can expect warm humor, for Russo finds comedy and tenderness in ordinary lives. You can expect a focus on family, community, history, and class. You can expect emotional depth and a building, sometimes surprising, drama beneath the everyday surface. You can expect generous, immersive storytelling in the realist tradition. You should expect a substantial, character-driven novel that rewards immersion. Expect, in short, a warm, humane, and richly characterized novel of small-town life, a superb introduction to Russo’s gifts.

Going Deeper After Your First Book

Once Empire Falls has introduced you to Russo’s gifts, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore his other novels, which continue his warm humor, his rich characterization, and his affectionate, clear-eyed portraits of small-town American life. His other beloved works return to declining towns and their vivid inhabitants, including the much-loved novel and its sequel following a charming, irresponsible everyman, each marked by his warmth, humor, and humanity. Reading these after Empire Falls deepens your appreciation of Russo’s distinctive gifts, the warm humor, the rich characterization, and the portrait of small-town life. His characteristic strengths run through his work, and the reader who has enjoyed Empire Falls will find them across his novels. Building your reading journey through Russo is a matter of following his fiction from Empire Falls into his other novels. The reader who begins here and continues will find one of the warmest and most humane chroniclers of small-town American life.

Reading Richard Russo

Empire Falls is Russo’s essential novel. Nobody’s Fool (1993) is the natural companion — equally funny, equally rooted in working-class New England, and featuring the irresistible Sully Sullivan.

For the full Richard Russo bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Richard Russo author page on Editors Reads.

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