Customer Reviews

Success Stories

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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.

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.

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.

This is a collection of moving and deeply thought provocing stories. The semi-autobiographical tone of the 6 of the stories show how even the minutest bits of success can elevate a person to great things. I highly recommend this and other Banks' novels. He has a way of making you think which isn't common among many writers today

Success Stories is an prime example of what Banks does best--tell the stories of people surviving in the wilderness of exurban northern New England. His portrayals are accurate and the conflicts are real.

I can hardly wait to get my hands on Trailer Park.