Review #11: Mohawk, by Richard Russo

I read Richard Russo's Empire Falls a few years ago and described it as a slow burn. I put it down several times, thinking I was bored with it, but after a few days, I found myself thinking about the characters and then devouring 150 pages at a time. Mohawk had the same effect on me, only reduced by about 50%.

Set in Mohawk, NY, a dying northern industrial town, Mohawk is very much like Empire Falls in that it's not really about anything other than the stories of the town's residents. There are unhappy marriages, unhappy wives, unhappy factory workers, unhappy waitresses...it seems as though the entire town is a little bit grey and downtrodden.

But that's classic Russo - stories about the quiet desperation that is played out in small towns across the country, towns that are hanging on by the barest of threads. Stories of the waitress who has worked at the same greasy diner for twenty years, serving men as they grow older with each cup of coffee she pours for them. Stories of the long suffering wife who harbors a secret crush on her cousin's husband, dreaming of the day when they can run away together, and then when the opportunity is finally there, when they can finally be together free of their spouses, she backs out and retreats to her mama's house. Stories of the town bookie who tries to pay a dead man's winnings to his widow, only to be greeted with scorn and suspicion. 

This wasn't Russo's best - in fact it almost felt like a practice novel for Empire Falls - but Russo at his worst is still a much better writer than most. 

Review #19: Empire Falls, by Richard Russo

I picked up Empire Falls at the library bookshop, drawn in by the cover and the gold seal declaring that it was a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I felt like I needed to read a real book after, you know, this one.

Empire Falls follows the story of Miles Roby, a small-town, blue collar man who feels stuck in his life. He's been running the grill downtown for twenty years under the oppressive thumb of the town matriarch, his divorce proceedings are progressing at a teeth-gnashingly slow rate, something that is not helped by his estranged wife's fiance hanging out at the lunch counter every day, challenging him to arm wrestling contests, and his daughter is a teenager, a statement that needs no further explanation.

I read a review of this novel that compared Russo's writing to a slow boil, and that's exactly what it is. I put this book down several times - it lags in places, and I grew a little bored waiting for something to happen, but after a few days, I'd pick it up again, and literally devour another seventy-five or a hundred pages. It pulls in hundreds of threads, and weaves them together in a way you don't always see coming. The characters are flawed, exquisite, sad, conflicted, ugly, but always, they are very, very human.

In other words, Russo's book is very much like real life.