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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Caution: Russell Banks is my favorite!,
By
This review is from: The Darling (Hardcover)
Russell Banks is a master at evoking a time and place. In his latest novel, The Darling, the reader is in Africa. It is the mid-1970s. We can see the Liberian coastline, smell the palm oil mingled with sweat, hear the screech of the chimpanzees and feel the claustrophobic heat. More importantly, we experience western Africa through the lens of a privileged, white American woman, Hannah Musgrove who is "the darling" of the title. Banks tells this historical and political story, most of it in flashbacks, skillfully and successfully through the point of view of this woman.
Hannah is a fascinating character, full of tensions and contradictions. She has lead a sheltered life of wealth as the daughter of a famous and intellectual man, yet her politically liberal parents have instilled in her (sometimes seemingly in spite of themselves) a sincere empathy for the poor and oppressed. She is cold and calculating in her relationships with others yet has an almost mystical connection with the chimpanzees she comes to know and love and is passionate about her politics. Hannah makes some decisions, which she feels she needs to contextualize and explain herself to the reader in order not to seem "scary". To dwell on the plot, however, does this gem of a novel a disservice. Banks is simply a genius at conveying a difficult story and doing it so well that we care deeply about it.
38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Out of Africa ... a tale of dislocation,
This review is from: The Darling (Hardcover)
Russell Banks has made his mark writing about mad people in significantly unsettled worlds, from the Pulitzer Prize-finalist "Cloudsplitter" (about violent abolitionist John Brown) to "Affliction" (about an alcoholic's insidious effect on his circle of dysfunction.)
But in his newest novel, "The Darling," he subtly reverses his field with provocative results: His heroine is a significantly unsettled character in a mad world. What might seem a nuance is actually quite startlingly different. Africa has popped up in the well-traveled Banks' stories before. The setting for some of the storytelling in his 2001 short-story collection, "Angel on the Roof," it provides an atmospheric context for complex exploration of black and white, head and heart, man and beast, love and survival ... sanity and madness. Banks' themes of terror, self-doubt, the collision of races (if not worlds), the relentless passage of time, and political violence are not the stuff of modern commercial book-publishing, but he keeps coming back to them with incisive style. Banks remains one of America's most readable literary authors. He's always tackled grand issues with grand prose, and his muscular narrative generally wins. Often compared to Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad or William Faulkner -- not the most accessible trio of literary writers ever assembled -- Banks sets himself apart as more clear, if not more relevant, for today's readers. Readers who fell headlong into "The Sweet Hereafter" or "Continental Drift" will not be disabused by "The Darling."
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Coming of age + history + politics = good read,
By
This review is from: The Darling (Hardcover)
Like all the novels Darling works on several different levels. First, it is a good story . . . kept moving, good characters, suspense, enough moving back and forth in time to tantalize you, but not so much as to totally confuse you. So, it is simply a good read.
It also worked as a "coming of age" story-although, read as just that, it would of course be a little over the top. Nonetheless, she goes through all the "typical" stages of adolescent rebellion (Weather Underground), forbidden love, independence from parents (how much more independent can you be than moving to Africa and never speaking to them!), marriage, child rearing, divorce/distance in marriage, empty nest syndrome, and replacement of familial ties with other objects of passion (here the chimps), death of parent, an attempt recapture "youth" (her trip back to Africa), and a second life post-retirement. During each phase she clearly develops a new personality (or at least changes in significant ways). It also reads as a commentary on U.S. Foreign policy-which is what I think is implied in the title. Here she is, having gone through all of these "phases" in her personal life-joining a revolutionary underground which actually blows things up, fomenting revolution and mass slaughter in an African country, and living as a fugitive for decades. However, while the lives of everyone in Liberia are completely upended and made a living hell because of that country's revolution(s), her life ends up being virtually unaffected-she ends up as a "gentleman" farmer, about as normal an occupation as there is in the world, and all of her revolutionary activities, at least in this country, have, in the end, changed nothing-except her. Hence, she is, at the end, nothing but an "American Darling". This is a fine allegory for the way the U.S. stumbles around the world, intervening in other countries, sometimes (but not usually) with the best of intentions, makes a holly mess, and then blithely disappears, blaming the country we've so thoroughly screwed up for being "backward" and beyond hope. Iraq anyone?
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