From one of America's most celebrated storytellers come three dark, interlocking tales about the residents of a rural New York town, and the shocking headlines that become their local mythologies.
The acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone returns with a provocative new novel that illuminates the shadowed edges of contemporary American culture with startling and unforgettable resultsSuspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Bankss uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professors motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man.When the camp beneath the causeway is raided by the police, and later, when a hurricane all but destroys the settlement, the Professor tries to help the Kid in practical matters while trying to teach his young charge new ways of looking at, and understanding, what he has done. But when the Professors past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two mens relationship shifts.Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.Long one of our most acute and insightful novelists, Russell Banks often examines the indistinct boundaries between our intentions and actions. A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most accomplished storytellers, Lost Memory of Skin unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical, show-casing Banks at his most compelling, his reckless sense of humor and intense empathy at full bore.The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassiona society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.
A masterly collection of new stories from Russell Banks, acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone, which maps the complex terrain of the modern American familyThe New York Times lauds Russell Banks as "the most compassionate fiction writer working today." Long celebrated for his unflinching, empathetic works that explore the unspoken but hard realities of contemporary culture, Banks now turns his keen intelligence and emotional acuity on perhaps his most complex subject yet: the shape of family in its many forms. Suffused with Banks's trademark lyricism and reckless humor, the twelve stories in A Permanent Member of the Family examine the myriad ways we try?and sometimes fail?to connect with one another, as we seek a home in the world. Moving between the stark beauty of winter in upstate New York and the seductive heat of Florida, A Permanent Member of the Family charts with subtlety and precision the ebb and flow of both the families we make for ourselves and the ones we're born into. One of our most acute and penetrating authors, Banks is a virtuosic writer whose stories are profoundly humane, deeply?and darkly?funny, and absolutely unforgettable.
"At once a harrowing mystery, an illuminating psychological novel of subverted love and family dysfunction, and a powerful commentary on class structure in America . . . [Banks is] one of America's finest contemporary fiction writers." --Boston GlobePart love story, part murder mystery, set on the cusp of the Second World War, Russell Banks's sharp-witted and deeply engaging novel raises dangerous questions about class, politics, art, love, and madness--and explores what happens when two powerful personalities, trapped at opposite ends of a social divide, begin to break the rules.Vanessa Cole is a stunningly beautiful and wild heiress. Twice-married, she has been scandalously linked to rich and famous men. On the night of July 4, 1936, inside her family's remote Adirondack Mountain enclave known as the Reserve, Vanessa will lose her father to a heart attack--and meet Jordan Groves, a seductively carefree local artist. Jordan is easy prey for Vanessa's electrifying charm. But when Vanessa becomes unhinged by her father's unexpected death, she begins to spin out of control, manipulating and destroying the lives of all who cross her path.Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondacks to war-torn Spain and fascist Germany, and filled with characters that pierce the heart, The Reserve is a clever, incisive, and passionately romantic novel of suspense and drama.
"The most convincing portrait I know of contemporary America . . . a great American novel." -- James Atlas, The Atlantic MonthlyFrom acclaimed author Russell Banks, a masterful novel of hope lost and gained--a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream.Banks's searing tale of uprootedness, migration, and exploitation in contemporary America brings together two of the dominant realms of his fiction--New England and the Caribbean--skillfully braided into one taut narrative. Continental Drift is the story of a young blue-collar worker and family man who abandons his broken dreams in New Hampshire and the story of a young Haitian woman who, with her nephew and baby, flees the brutal injustice and poverty of her homeland.Continental Drift is a powerful literary classic from one of contemporary fiction's most important writers.
Get to know the colorful cast of characters at the Granite State Trailerpark, where Flora in number 11 keeps more than a hundred guinea pigs andscreams at people to stay away from her babies, Claudel in number 5 thinks he is lucky until his wife burns down their trailer and runs off with Howie Leeke, and Noni in number 7 has telephone conversations with Jesus and tells the police about them. In this series of related short stories, Russell Banks offers gripping, realistic portrayals of individual Americans and paints a portrait of New England life that is at once dark, witty, and revealing.
When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name "Bone." He finds dangerous refuge with a group of biker-thieves, and then hides in the boarded-up summer house of a professor and his wife. He finally settles in an abandoned schoolbus with Rose, a child he rescues from a fast-talking pedophile. There Bone meets I-Man, an exiled Rastafarian, and together they begin a second adventure that takes the reader from Middle America to the ganja-growing mountains of Jamaica. It is an amazing journey of self-discovery through a world of magic, violence, betrayal and redemption.
Exploring the spectrum of responses felt by the inhabitants of a small Adirondack town in the wake of a tragic school bus accident, "The Sweet Hereafter" is a compelling morality tale that wrestles with the timeless questions of life, responsibility and human hope. Russell Banks has received numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in upstate New York and Princeton, NJ."Banks poses many questions, and his canvas is far larger than any thumbnail sketch of its components can suggest." "--San Francisco Chronicle" "Without sentimentalizing them in the least, Banks has extended the themes explored in his previous novels . . . to show that wiser, possibly even better people can emerge from the ordeal: that some old American decencies still prevail, against all odds." "--Chicago Tribune" "Russell Banks is a writer of extraordinary power."--Gail Caldwell, "Boston Globe"
A stunning novel of our times with a unique character - Bone - who will stay with you long after this book has ended
John Brown is America's most famous political terrorist, who in 1859 raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, intending to galvanise the Southern slaves into rebellion. This is John's story, told by his son. It recreates pre-Civil War America, and tells of one man's passage from abolitionist to guerrilla fighter and, finally, martyr.
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