The Reserve: A Novel (P.S.) [Paperback]

Russell Banks (Author)

Book Description

Series: P.S. | Publication Date: February 10, 2009

Part love story, part murder mystery, set on the cusp of the Second World War, Russell Banks's sharp-witted and deeply engaging new 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. Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondack wilderness to the skies above war-torn Spain and Fascist Germany, The Reserve is a clever, incisive, and passionately romantic novel of suspense that adds a new dimension to this acclaimed author's extraordinary repertoire.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tom Stechschulte's voice is well suited to this novel's myriad layers of time and interlocking characters. Although superficially different-genteel versus rebellious, calm versus wild-the central figures all have an old-fashioned depth. Set in the mid-1930s amid mounting concerns over war, numerous characters have Germanic accents, which Stechschulte reproduces adeptly. He shifts easily from the backwoods drawl of the people who live surrounding the exclusive reserve in the Adirondacks to the haughty upper-class tones of the wealthy who stay there. Similarly, he captures the broad, confident tones of Jordan Groves, the prickly artist who fits neither group, but then moves his voice fluidly to that of the enigmatic heiress, Vanessa Cole, who catches Groves's eye. Stechschulte gives Vanessa's words the right husky, even sultry quality, but more importantly he perfectly expresses her rapidly shifting emotions of inner turmoil and borderline madness. Simultaneous release with the Harper hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 26).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Though Pulitzer Prizeâ€"winning Russell Banks made his name writing about the down-and-out, blue-collar side of Adirondack society (The Sweet Hereafter, Cloudsplitter), The Reserve represents a rare foray into chronicling the lifestyles of the rich and morally depraved. Inspiration for the novel’s many plot twists and turns (and even more twisted characters) reportedly came from sources as varied as the life of flamboyant leftist artist Rockwell Kent to rumors about Ernest Hemingway’s troubled affair with a gorgeous but unstable mistress. Unfortunately, the New York Times expressed a majority opinion when it stated that the many threads of the story just didn’t coalesce, resulting in a mere “potboiler” with “silly and stereotype[d]” charactersâ€"a world away from Banks’s best work.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (February 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061430269
• ISBN-13: 978-0061430268
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,088,048 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Russell Banks is the author of sixteen works of fiction, many of which depict seismic events in US history, such as the fictionalized journey of John Brown in Cloudsplitter. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes, and two of his novels-The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction-have been made into award-winning films. His forthcoming novel, The Reserve, will be published in early 2008. President of the International Parliament of Writers and former New York State Author, Banks lives in upstate New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Art Imitates Art?, February 26, 2008

By 

Tom S. "filmfan3" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Reserve (Hardcover)

I've never read Russell Banks before, so I wasn't sure what to expect of THE RESERVE. The dust jacket copy and cover art reeled me in, so I bought it. This is apparently his homage to the American literary giants of yesteryear, notably Hemingway and Fitzgerald, with a distinctly modern point of view. It is certainly well-written, and the soapy plot is lively, and the contrast between the very rich and the working class at the height of the Depression is well-drawn. The two principal male characters are another study in contrasts, and they're interesting men. But the woman at the center of the story, the fabulously beautiful Vanessa Cole...well, much of your enjoyment of THE RESERVE will depend on your tolerance for her, and she is truly irritating, a charmless variation on any number of Hemingway and Fitzgerald characters. Still, the evocation of time and place is vivid, and there's a swoony romanticism to it all that's fun to read. Now I think I'll try some of his other, less derivative works.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I do not believe.............., August 23, 2008

By 

Crystal Clear "Book lover" (Santa Barbara, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reserve (Hardcover)

..........that the man who wrote Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, and Continental Drift also wrote The Reserve. Into the second chapter, I had to double check that there weren't two authors named Russell Banks. The story is just plain odd - the characters have no depth, no nuance and their actions ring false (an understatement.) I was reminded of Fountainhead (I noticed another reviewer mention Ayn Rand, so I am not necessarily losing my mind)only without the philosophical underpinnings. Any.

I, too, skimmed, which I only do when the author has totally failed to engage me, but I want to give some benefit of the doubt without a huge time investment. By the end, I suspected I'd lost absolutely nothing. There is no THERE there.

I have been a Banks fan for twenty years and all I can say is, I am baffled.

32 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Russell Banks' Gift Outright, February 19, 2008

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Reserve (Hardcover)

Russell Banks' latest novel THE RESERVE, set in the Adirondacks in the second half of the 1930's, opens with a beautiful description of a beautiful woman, Vanessa Cole, the twenty-nine-year-old adopted daughter of a rich New York brain surgeon, Dr. Carter Cole, who is credited with the invention of the lobotomy, and his socialite wife Evelyn. Several times married, a participant in many affairs-- she is rumored to have slept with Ernest Hemingway-- impulsive, selfish, Vanessa seems on the surface to be a spoiled rich girl as her life intertwines with three other central characters. Jordan Groves is a handsome man's man, an artist-- whom I believe Mr. Banks said he may have modeled in part after Rockwell Kent-- also a pilot, with leftist political leanings and a womanizer and adulterer although he only sleeps with women one time and lets them seduce him; hence, he has no guilt. Jordan is married to Alicia, his long-suffering and pretty wife and the mother of his two sons, whom he has insisted on naming after animals he likes, Bear and Wolf. Finally, Hubert St. Germain is a competent, muscular guide for the rich summer vacationers, in his 30's, one of the locals-- he voted for Herbert Hoover-- who lives alone in a cabin, having lost his wife in an accident. These four characters find themselves in a quagmire that they have gotten themselves into by their own actions.

In prose as transparent as the Adirondack lake Jordan Groves sets his biplane down in, Mr. Russell creates a story in the noir tradition that in the hands of a lesser skilled writer would have been a potboiler. The plot has some unexpected twists and turns although some of the things that happen to these characters ultimately are unavoidable. Like other Banks characters, as the author himself has described, as the plot progresses, there are fewer and fewer things possible for them and they cannot survive. Even though these four individuals commit bad acts, they in the end are not villains but rather engaging sympathetic characters-- in a word, all too human.

The novel has an authentic feel to it and is full of details from the 1930's: Lucky Strike cigarettes, GONE WITH THE WIND, the dirigible, Packards. There are references to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the singer Jimmy Rogers, and John Dos Passos who once at a party allegedly made a drunken pass at Alicia.

THE RESERVE is about class: the lives of the idle rich are contrasted with the locals, the victims of the Great Depression, who are little more than servants of the vacationers who employ them. Jordan Groves is in many ways caught between classes. He moves in the circles of the Coles but is more comfortable drinking beer with the local workers. Hubert, however, is the most admirable character in the novel. He values honesty and understands the value of decent work. It is no coincidence that Mr. Banks ends this novel with the thoughts of Hubert. This bleak novel is also about the loneliness that each individual feels, that can be filled, if only briefly, by giving love to someone else-- and finally about duty. Alicia knows what she will do with the rest of her days. "She will raise her sons, and when they become men she wil cling to them and want to ask constantly of them if they love her, but she will hold her tongue. Instead, over and over she will ask herself, and now and again will dare to ask her sons, if she did badly by them, and they will sigh and reassure her one more time that she did not do badly by them and they are grateful."

Ideas like these so well-written are why we read fiction. Russell Banks is one of our best writers.