Empire Fails

As I grow older, I have less tolerance for grit. 

Perhaps I'm growing more discerning -- I'd like to think that -- but maybe I'm just less tolerant of things that don't work for me. Grit is one of them.

I have abandoned Richard Russo's Empire Falls, even though I'm two-thirds of the way through it. Even though it's a Pulitzer winner. Even though I singled it out for inclusion in this year's challenge reading.

I'm sure Russo is lauded for his depictions of the rigors of failing, flailing life in small-town Maine, full of quirky characters and broken dreams. I'm sure he's trying to do something with this collection of characters, but I can't stomach any more of it. Every time I read another page, there's another scene or another line making me want to quit all over again. I can't trust this book. It's always showing me things I'd rather not see.

The only character I find halfway tolerable is the teenage daughter, Tick. (What a great name for a girl, right?) She's an outsider, prone to kindness, mixed up with a brash young tough, tentatively friends with the high school outcast, and I'm pretty sure something awful is going to happen to her and she's going to defend herself with an Exacto knife. I can see it coming, but I don't want to see it.

I feel the same way about Russo's depiction of the cat that belongs to the rich lady who owns more than half the town. Russo never misses an opportunity to include something awful about cats, and I'm sure this particular cat will play a key role in an important moment: Russo goes to great lengths to depict how the cat yowls and scratches, seems to have a vendetta against the main character, Miles, and pretty much terrorizes everyone in town.  

I know just how it feels.