Success Stories [Paperback]

Russell Banks (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (1987)
• ASIN: B000OVA6J0
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Human, January 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Success Stories (Paperback)

Russell Banks doesn't write about people per se; he write about what they do and leaves you to determine why they do it. Reading his prose is sort of like touring the human psyche by the light of a sputtering sparkler. Banks will never cheat or dupe you, and that's what makes his subjects and their lives so wonderfully human.

The Sarah Cole story is worth the price of the book, and The Fish is an amazingly incisive parable about righteousness and the tragedy of good intentions.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Success Stories, December 1, 1999

By 

Jaime Nichols (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Success Stories (Paperback)

A book about contradiction and moral mistakes, Success Stories did something for me that literature sometimes can: it helped me understand myself and my relationships with the people I love a little more usefully.

Several of the stories follow the fortunes of Earl Painter and his broken family with a distinctness and sympathetic humanity that forgives these sad characters who do the best they can with what they have and who they are, but does not blind itself or romanticize the truths of their lives. The other stories read like morality fables, reminding us that our own good and evil, our own conscious and unconscious intentions can be subverted and pushed down paths we don't have the foresight to predict when they leave us and go into the world.

A deeply moving and satisfying book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Success Stories, December 1, 1999

By 

Jaime Nichols (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Success Stories (Paperback)

A book about contradiction and moral mistakes, Success Stories did something for me that literature sometimes can: it helped me understand myself and my relationships with the people I love a little more usefully.

Several of the stories follow the fortunes of Earl Painter and his broken family with a distinctness and sympathetic humanity that forgives these sad characters who do the best they can with what they have and who they are, but does not blind itself or romanticize the truths of their lives. The other stories read like morality fables, reminding us that our own good and evil, our own conscious and unconscious intentions can be subverted and pushed down paths we don't have the foresight to predict when they leave us and go into the world.

A deeply moving and satisfying book.