SOURCE: Broun, Bill. “Down Home Folk.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5127 (6 July 2001): 22.

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...