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Empire Falls

184 statements
35 feature instances
4 referencing feature instances

Empire Falls	type	TVTItem
Empire Falls	label	Empire Falls
Empire Falls	page	EmpireFalls
Empire Falls	comment	Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })Empire Falls is a 2001 novel by Richard Russo.It is set in the small town of Empire Falls, Maine. Once Empire Falls was a Company Town that was more or less completely owned by the Whiting family, who also owned the mill and the shirt factory. But C.B. Whiting killed himself, and his widow Francine sold off the mill and the shirt factory and turned most of the town out of work. Now Empire Falls is a Dying Town with a shrinking population.The protagonist is 42-year-old Miles Roby, who runs the Empire Grill, the town's Greasy Spoon and one of the few remaining businesses, although the grill is in the red. Miles has various ideas to make the restaurant profitable again, but runs into opposition from Mrs. Whiting, who seems to hate change of any sort.Miles is basically a doormat who lets people walk all over him. He had ambitions to get a college degree and do something in the literary world, but years ago when his mom was dying of cancer he came back and started to work at the Grill. At least part of the reason was that young Miles was desperately in love with the Empire Grill's curvaceous waitress Charlene, but she friend-zoned him, and 20 years have rolled by with Miles stuck at the grill. After he missed his shot with Charlene, Miles married a local girl named Janice, and they have a teenaged daughter, "Tick" (Christina). However, Janine cheated on Miles with local gym owner Walt Comeau, and as the story opens, their divorce is about to be finalized.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })The town is full of colorful characters. Miles's father Max is a shiftless deadbeat and perpetual drunk who as it happens is pretty happy living life that way. Local cop Jimmy Minty is an old "friend" of Miles who actually doesn't like Miles at all. Jimmy's son Zack is a loathsome bully who to Miles's horror is dating Tick. And there's the Posthumous Character of Miles's mother, Grace, dead for two decades. Much of the plot revolves around an affair Grace had when Miles was nine, when she went to Martha's Vineyard with Miles in tow and met a mysterious man named Charlie.In 2005 this novel was adapted into a two-part TV movie directed by Fred Schepisi that featured Paul Newman in his last on-screen role (Newman's actual last role was as the voice of Doc Hudson in Cars.)
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Empire Falls / int_1045c71a	type	Dying Town
Empire Falls / int_1045c71a	comment	Dying Town: Empire Falls, ever since all the manufacturing jobs went away. The restaurant is withering for lack of customers, and the loss in population has caused the football team to be dropped to a smaller class.
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Empire Falls / int_10cb9a31	type	Axes at School
Empire Falls / int_10cb9a31	comment	Axes at School: John Voss, who is revealed to have dumped his grandmother's body in a landfill, comes back to school with a gun. He kills three and leaves Tick's friend Candace a paraplegic, but Tick survives, thanks to Principal Meyer Taking the Bullet.
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Empire Falls / int_1392fbe7	type	Drunk Driver
Empire Falls / int_1392fbe7	comment	Drunk Driver: Miles' brother David was an alcoholic whose drinking resulted in an accident that cost him the use of one of his hands; David then quit the bottle. Miles's father Max the drunken lout lost both his license and his car after DUIs. Max does not care.
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Empire Falls / int_1b60dcba	type	The Bully
Empire Falls / int_1b60dcba	comment	The Bully: Jimmy Minty's son Zack is an awful bullying creep, who delights in cruelty and makes particular sport out of tormenting weirdo loner John Voss. On the football field, he delivers a late hit to the other team's quarterback that knocks the quarterback out for the rest of the season.
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Empire Falls / int_1c21e3fb	type	The Place
Empire Falls / int_1c21e3fb	comment	The Place: "Empire Falls", with a name that fits its Dying Town status.
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Empire Falls / int_22cf536c	type	Chekhov's Gun
Empire Falls / int_22cf536c	comment	Chekhov's Gun: Jimmy Minty's POV reveals that he has a key machine that he bought from a going-out-of-business hardware store, and Jimmy says he has a skeleton key that can open any door in town. It turns out that Jimmy's been committing a series of thefts and decorating his home with the proceeds.
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Empire Falls / int_3318a1cb	type	Distant Finale
Empire Falls / int_3318a1cb	comment	Distant Finale: The finale skips forward several years to reveal that Miles and Tick have been on Martha's Vineyard the whole time, as she recuperates from the school shooting. Miles, no longer under Mrs. Whiting's thumb, elects to go back and work with Bea at her restaurant.
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Empire Falls / int_3678bb22	type	Russian Roulette
Empire Falls / int_3678bb22	comment	Russian Roulette: Zack Minty the bullying cretin does this, but he takes all the bullets out of the gun first. He's just trying to impress his friends.
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Empire Falls / int_477bcc9f	type	Greasy Spoon
Empire Falls / int_477bcc9f	comment	Greasy Spoon: The Empire Grill, a greasy spoon place that used to offer simple fare and cater to mill workers when they weren't on shift. Over the past 20 years or so, however, the mills have closed and Empire Falls has become a Dying Town, and the restaurant has long since run in the red. Miles, casting about for a way to make money, is trying to lift the Grill out of greasy spoon status, expanding the fare from hamburgers and pasta to stuff like Mexican food and other specialized cuisine; the idea is to replace the long-gone mill workers with professors from nearby college towns.
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Empire Falls / int_53224e46	type	Bookends
Empire Falls / int_53224e46	comment	Bookends: The novel starts with a Distant Prologue in which C.B. Whiting meets and marries Francine, only for her to drive him to suicide. It ends with a flashback that reveals C.B. had come home with every intention of murdering his wife, until the sight of her in the company of Grace and Cindy drove him to shoot himself, out of guilt over maiming his daughter.
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Empire Falls / int_53c9fc92	type	Flashback
Empire Falls / int_53c9fc92	comment	Flashback: The book opens and closes with flashbacks from the POV of Charlie Whiting. Another flashback has 9-year-old Miles going with his mom for a trip to Martha's Vineyard, which is really a rendezvous with her lover.
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Empire Falls / int_5798bfbf	type	Reassigned to Antarctica
Empire Falls / int_5798bfbf	comment	Reassigned to Antarctica: Father Mark got reassigned to Empire Falls, a Dying Town with a church that will probably soon be amalgamated, because he got arrested at an anti-war protest.
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Empire Falls / int_58e43f17	type	Cats Are Mean
Empire Falls / int_58e43f17	comment	Cats Are Mean: A Running Gag concerning Mrs. Whiting's cat Timmy, a girl despite the name, who is as mean as her owner. Miles longs to drown Timmy, who always scratches him when he visits Mrs. Whiting. In one scene he leaves the window to his car open, and finds that Timmy got in and scratched the upholstery on the passenger seat all to hell.
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Empire Falls / int_6b05b601	type	Jerkass Has a Point
Empire Falls / int_6b05b601	comment	Jerkass Has a Point: Throughout the book Janine is depicted as selfish, vain, and self-centered. She constantly insults Miles who is the sympathetic POV character, and she cheated on her good-hearted husband with the obnoxious Walt whom everyone in the town hates. In fact nobody likes her, not even Tick. But when her POV chapter reveals that Miles never once gave her an orgasm in twenty years of marriage, and in fact theirs was an almost Sexless Marriage, her motives for cheating and divorce are more understandable.
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Empire Falls / int_6b2b3b59	type	The Reveal
Empire Falls / int_6b2b3b59	comment	The Reveal: It may not be hard to guess that "Charlie Mayne", the lover that Grace Roby met at Martha's Vineyard, was C.B. Whiting, but Miles is still surprised when he figures it out. The end of the book reveals that it was actually C.B. Whiting himself who ran over his daughter Cindy, leaving her permanently crippled; this is what drove him to kill himself.
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Empire Falls / int_6d332aea	type	Driven to Suicide
Empire Falls / int_6d332aea	comment	Driven to Suicide: Many years ago C.B. Whiting killed himself. It's implied that his horrible bitch of a wife drove him to suicide, but the ending flashback reveals that it was actually his guilt over running over his own daughter with a car, leaving her a cripple.
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Empire Falls / int_7a82c3d2	type	All Love Is Unrequited
Empire Falls / int_7a82c3d2	comment	All Love Is Unrequited: A running theme. Rich girl Cindy Whiting has loved protagonist Miles Roby, proprietor of the local Greasy Spoon, since they were teens. Miles is aware of this but simply doesn't love her back, instead being infatuated with Charlene, the curvaceous waitress at his restaurant. Unfortunately Charlene put Miles in the friend zone some 25 years ago—which is why he married Janice, despite the fact that he doesn't love her. She eventually divorces him when she realizes this. Even among the teenagers, Tick's friend Candace is desperately in love with Zack, who holds her in contempt.
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Empire Falls / int_7ec94d53	type	Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds
Empire Falls / int_7ec94d53	comment	Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: John Voss, the creepy boy in Tick's art class that she forms a sort of friendship with. It's eventually revealed that he is the son of horribly abusive drug-addicted parents who, before they abandoned him, were given to sometimes tying him up in a burlap sack and leaving him there for hours. At the end of the book John shoots up his art class, killing three.
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Empire Falls / int_89295a38	type	Buxom Is Better
Empire Falls / int_89295a38	comment	Buxom Is Better: Charlene. Miles was just one of the boys who were hypnotized by her voluptuousness. Jimmy Minty told of getting a glimpse of her cleavage dangling when she bent over in a bikini. Charlene herself attributes generous tips to her breasts, and Mrs. Whiting calls her "the one with the knockers."
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Empire Falls / int_8b568cb7	type	Posthumous Character
Empire Falls / int_8b568cb7	comment	Posthumous Character: Miles's mother Grace, dead some 20 years, and C.B. Whiting who has been dead for nearly as long. The book opens and ends with flashbacks showing C.B., and there are flashbacks to Miles and Grace going to Martha's Vineyard and meeting a man who turns out to be C.B. Whiting.
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Empire Falls / int_9ce6492a	type	Taking the Bullet
Empire Falls / int_9ce6492a	comment	Taking the Bullet: Principal Meyer steps in front of Tick, takes a bullet for her (John Voss is shooting up the school) and is killed.
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Empire Falls / int_9d352e21	type	Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat
Empire Falls / int_9d352e21	comment	Overly Nervous Flop Sweat: Principal Meyer is "mopping his glistening forehead" as he awkwardly broaches to Tick the idea of John Voss, the bully victim, joining her private lunches.
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Empire Falls / int_9e0c3153	type	Punctuated! For! Emphasis!
Empire Falls / int_9e0c3153	comment	Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The normally mild-mannered, somewhat wimpy Miles gets angry when Jimmy makes a comment about how Grace Roby wouldn't have been happy to see her son coming back to Empire Falls.
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Empire Falls / int_a2492aff	type	Dogged Nice Guy
Empire Falls / int_a2492aff	comment	Dogged Nice Guy: Miles spends 25 years hanging around Charlene kind of hoping that she'll give him a shot, even as she cycles through four husbands. He finally gives up after realizing that she is in a relationship with his brother David.
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Empire Falls / int_a861560f	type	The Friend Nobody Likes
Empire Falls / int_a861560f	comment	The Friend Nobody Likes: Walt Comeau, who keeps coming in the Empire Grill and calling Miles "Big Boy" and challenging him to arm wrestling, all the while giving unwanted advice and marveling loudly over how Miles could have let Janice go. At one point when Walt is being particularly obnoxious, Horace tells Miles that "No jury would convict you."
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Empire Falls / int_bfc84d44	type	Calling Parents by Their Name
Empire Falls / int_bfc84d44	comment	Calling Parents by Their Name: Janine's hostile relationship with her mother Bea is demonstrated by Janine calling her mother "Beatrice".
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Empire Falls / int_c6edf1c	type	Tragic Dropout
Empire Falls / int_c6edf1c	comment	Tragic Dropout: Miles dropped out of college his senior year, to look after his dying mother, although he actually stuck around because he was infatuated with sexy waitress Charlene. His mother was horrified by his decision.
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Empire Falls / int_db2f3581	type	All Girls Want Bad Boys
Empire Falls / int_db2f3581	comment	All Girls Want Bad Boys: Charlene claims that she would like to get with a good man like Miles, but that she has "an abiding preference for bad men whose insides were all twisted up in knots." She then admits that basically, she isn't attracted to him because he's dull.
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Empire Falls / int_deecc9eb	type	Awful Wedded Life
Empire Falls / int_deecc9eb	comment	Awful Wedded Life: Everyone. The opening has C.B. Whiting thinking about how both his father and grandfather wanted to kill their wives, and the finale reveals that Whiting nearly murdered Francine. Miles and Janice's marriage fell apart. Charlene was married and divorced four times. Jimmy Minty used to beat his wife, until she left him.
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Empire Falls / int_e3109dae	type	Switching P.O.V.
Empire Falls / int_e3109dae	comment	Switching P.O.V.: Miles gets the most POV time but there are many other characters with POV moments: Janine, Tick, Father Mark, Max, and Jimmy Minty, and more.
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Empire Falls / int_ee7fca3d	type	Silver Fox
Empire Falls / int_ee7fca3d	comment	Silver Fox: Walt Comeau, one of the antagonists, tries to invoke this—he actually calls himself the Silver Fox. He's also a Smug Snake and hiding numerous secrets, including his age (10 years older than he claims) and ramshackle personal finances.
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Empire Falls / int_f0df1a7f	type	Secret Other Family
Empire Falls / int_f0df1a7f	comment	Secret Other Family: Eventually it's revealed that C.B. Whiting had a second family in Mexico. At one point a Mexican woman shows up and revealed herself, and Mrs. Whiting bought her off.
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Empire Falls / int_fcbb72d9	type	Present Tense Narrative
Empire Falls / int_fcbb72d9	comment	Present Tense Narrative: All of the chapters from the various POV characters are told in standard past tense—except for some reason the chapters from Tick's POV. Possibly as a means of underlining the emotional urgency of high schoolers, Tick's chapters are told in present tense.
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Empire Falls / int_fe0330fb	type	Brick Joke
Empire Falls / int_fe0330fb	comment	Brick Joke: Max Roby ambles over to the graveyard and urinates on C.B. Whiting's grave. Much later, Miles and Cindy visit the grave, and Miles notes the strong smell of urine while Cindy wonders why the flowers have wilted so soon.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Empire Falls	hasFeature	Axes at School / int_cfc379f7
Empire Falls	hasFeature	Greasy Spoon / int_cfc379f7
Empire Falls	hasFeature	Present Tense Narrative / int_cfc379f7
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