[In the following review of Empire Falls, Broun approves of Russo's ambitious scope but finds the narrative to be overly nostalgic and bland.]

Empire Falls, the latest novel from Richard Russo, is a paean to and satire on small-town America. It works smoothly in the limited terms it sets for itself, offering the guilty pleasure of nostalgia and a cagey stereotyping that refuses to declare itself. The prose is utilitarian, the characters stock, and the ethos inoffensive. None the less, the almost angrily righteous praise the novel is receiving in America right now—most vociferously from newspaper staffers—makes it hard to ignore.

The title refers to the imaginary burg in Maine, where Russo stages his provincial epic, and it is an epically bland place: the poisonous, vibrant heyday of the old economy, rooted in the logging, textile and paper industries and riddled with the anguish of immigrant workers, has long since faded. The nineteenth-century mill buildings standing at the end of the main avenue, deserted and monumental, remain “the undeniable physical embodiment of the town's past”, constantly drawing the gaze and belittling the self. Of course, this is no place for architectural reverie; the new service economy of the Clinton boom years, with its multinational corporations, doughnut shops, fitness clubs and SUVs, has not only failed to heave the long-suffering residents of Empire Falls into happiness, it has spawned a cultural myopia. Anyone who knows even a little about old riverside mill towns of the northeastern United States must admit that the picture the author conjures of a cosy bleakness is well judged.

But Russo is a skilled enough storyteller to know that enervating bleakness has a way of killing drama. So, in the midst of the stagnation he places Miles Roby, an affable underachiever of forty-two who manages the Empire Grill with forbearance, good humour and mordant insight. The restaurant is a throwback to the 1950s greasy spoon, a much-troped slice of mythic Americana. At one point, Miles even recognizes an Edward Hopper tableau in a glimpse of the eatery from outside. Russo tries and fails to mask this conventionalism, an effort flagged when Miles scoffs at the idea of local students who might consider “the grill's wornout, cigarette-burned countertop and wobbly booths ‘honest’ or ‘retro’ or some damn thing”. In fact, that is exactly what we get. The grill is an old-fashioned social centre of town life, although the citizenry have progressed from weaving shirts at the factory to knitting petty troubles, most of which have Miles in the thick of them.

His wife, Janine, has ditched him for the local health-club entrepreneur. He is being messed around by rich, scheming Francine Whiting, who controls much of the town's real estate, including the Grill. His artistic sixteen-year-old daughter, Tick, seems alarmingly vulnerable. His father Max, a conniving, Falstaffian fellow “who could bullshit God himself”, provides yet more family stress. As the novel's many mini-dramas unfold and pressures pile on Miles, the facility with which Russo handles dozens of characters becomes more and more impressive. Before the violent climax, some weighty themes emerge, too: love's complex costs, the lasting effects of abuse within families, and that classic contemporary dilemma, “co-dependency”, in which our masochistic protagonist is well versed, at one point reflecting: “It was the people who enjoyed suffering who had some explaining to do.”

Russo's desire to write a very American contemplation on lost community is admirable; it is a theme which goes right back to Hawthorne and Cooper. But he plays it too safe, an error compounded by technical problems. Many sentences feel not only over-written, but flaccid: “Looking at all the blood, Tick feels her own left arm begin to throb the way it always does in anticipation of hypodermic needles at the doctor's office, and at horror movies when somebody gets slashed.” There is also a peculiar lack of emotional force in some characters, a few verging on the camp; is the Whiting family's scion “C. B.” a distant New England relation of Dallas's J. R.? Empire Falls offers a milkshake-smooth entertainment fix. Its unintentional nostalgia, the shortage of precise and lyrical language and the Hollywoodish familiarity of some of the characters are flaws which conspire to reduce depth. They may not hurt Russo's sales, but they are at least partly what makes the difference between a very good novel and a great one.