Empire Falls

[thisnewday]

 At 266 pages in, I've gotta say that I've NEVER enjoyed a book as much as I've enjoyed Richard Russo's Empire Falls. Period.

LPK
Dreamwidth
1.14.2020

Comments

[rosegardenfae]

Great characters as I recall. Makes me happy that you're reading something you love. Tis no greater pleasure than that. Empire Falls is a good place to hang out.
I have set aside "Rules of Civility" in exchange for a few of the "#1 Ladies Detective Agency" series. Needed some comfort reading and making an egg gathering apron for oldest granddaughter.

[thisnewday]

Aww, nice about the apron and know what you mean about "comfort reading." I think that "Empire Falls" was somehow that for me.

I finished it last night and rushed off to the city to work on the house this morning. So when I got back thought I'd sit down to "Empire Falls" the movie.

I do remember your saying that you'd read the book and watched part of the movie and wondered a little at that because it was the movie that turned me onto the book.

But you know what? I watched only part of the movie tonight and that's all it held me for. I loved the characters and their stories and loved the actors who played them. And the screenplay was written by the guy who wrote the book.

But it just didn't hold me. I was just so invested in the book and the movie had no chance of doing that for me.

Hope you have a good night...

[rosegardenfae]

We must have been "in synch" last night. I, too, started watching "Empire Falls" again, thinking that perhaps a second try might turn out better. But, alas, once again, I just couldn't engage with it. With such a marvelous cast, it seems that it should be a better flick, but I fell asleep.

[thisnewday]

LOL, I was trying to make a dinner-and-a-movie evening of it so I'm glad I didn't fall asleep. You know, like face-down in the souffle.

As I was reading the book, I had this odd feeling that I'd read it before--familiarity with details I couldn't have gotten from the movie when I watched it on HBO years ago. But that sort of dissipated later on in the book.

And I didn't remember it ending the way that it did. The actual ending of the story, not the epilogue where he becomes a child sitting in the fog and talking to "Charlie Mayne's" unhappy, accusatory ghost.

I somehow expected a lot more from it, maybe because I'd gotten a glimpse of the same potential that David had seen repressed in Miles, in what they'd belatedly been building over at Bea's place.

Anyway, such a strange, unhappy ending--albeit in keeping with the times--which keep on rolling. Like the Knox and people's lives, whether fictional or the reality.

Maybe if I'd fallen asleep before finishing the book and then never picked it up again, just imagining my own ending...

[rosegardenfae]

I like my endings to be happy, even though I know that is not the way things often turn out.

Enjoying the image of your face in the souffle...*snicker*

[thisnewday]

I agree with you about endings--the way we like our fictional ones to be while remaining cognizant of reality.

I seem to recall that earlier in life I didn't mind, maybe even preferred, a sort of "gut-punch" fiction. Maybe it's that, as we get older, we truly don't need such reminders of what reality is, or can often be. In fact, need the consolation of a softer kind of fiction.

As for the souffle, after reading your comment and having had yet another go at "Empire Falls the Movie," I totally pictured myself as Max Roby, lol...