Customer Reviews

Trailerpark

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book expecting it to be a hilarious, quirky look at life in a New Hampshire trailer park (Noni Hubner's conversations with Jesus, Flora's Guinea pigs) and was I ever wrong. I got to the end of "The Guinea Pig Lady" almost in tears, and was sobbing by the time I got to the last one, "The Fisherman." Although it wasn't what I expected, it was one the most amzing books ever! The stories are beautifully human, nothing short of marvelous and was full of scenes so unmercifully gritty, it's real. I stongly recommend this book to anyone willing to read such sorrow, but it's totally worth it!

Not sure if there's a certain "order" one should read Banks' books in, but I started with "Rule of the Bone" which I enjoyed so much I immediately bought "Trailerpark" and then "Book of Jamaica" (which I have not yet read). In this collection of short stories, we see a cast of characters that, at first glance, could be from Anytown USA. As the stories develop, at first humourous then getting progressively more bleak, we begin to realize that what makes the characters unique, as in "Rule of the Bone," is their life in the rural northeast. I love the way the lives of the tenants of the Granite State Trailerpark are intertwined; it's just a fabulous read.

This collection of short stories can be read as a novel. Most of the action takes place in the late 1970s in a trailer park in the Northeastern part of the USA. There is good character development of the individuals who live in the park, a little sex and very little violence.

Readers who are acquainted with the Beans of Egypt Maine and the Giffords of Mattagash will know by sight the denizens of the Granite State Trailer Park on Skitter Lake in outback New Hampshire. Russell Banks's characters, mostly misfits and miscreants who have long since opted for life at the end of the road, are the literary kin of the Beans and Giffords and the Pickens boys down in Tula Springs, Louisiana. Their special gift, if you can call it that, is to redefine losing as winning and vice versa. These trailer park residents aren't going much if any place soon, and that's just fine with them.

At the outset of this set of sixteen interrelated stories about life in twelve mostly dilapidating trailers, albeit with a water view for some and hornpout for the holidays, one wants to like the characters. They are off beat enough to make them interesting, or would be if Banks captured them better. With one or two exceptions, e.g. Marcella Chapman the trailerpark manager and Merle Ring, the hornpout fisherman, the folks you meet in these pages are not all that original. Once you've read a story or two you'll have a good line on how the others are going to turn out. The protagonist of the first story is the guinea pig lady of the story's title. She is, if I'm not mistaken, a metaphor for the cat ladies (and men) of this world, the people who out of loneliness or loonyness surround themselves with too many cats, or gold fish or parakeets. Their obituaries make for good reading; their novella length biographies not so much.

One thing about interrelated stories, the author (or the editor) needs to take care not to trip over the tangle of his story lines. Take the case of Bruce Severance, the community drug dealer who set out to make a killing selling the hemp he found growing wild in the nearby forest. Bruce chose the wrong partners and ended up being killed himself in "Dis Boy, Him Gwan". Notwithstanding that set back (p. 113), Bruce shows up in the denouement of "Fisherman" (the last story in the book and best) with a hand in the action. (p.269).

Merle Ring, the community's hornpout supplier, is a crusty old bachelor (after however many marriages) who winters on the lake in his ice fishing shanty, coming into town once a week for Canadian Club and cornflakes. He had life to his liking until fortune struck and he won the weekly state lottery. To make matters worse, that automatically entered him in the drawing for the grand prize. Do read this story if you read none of the others. Then, if you care to, leave a comment stating how you would have ended it. My hunch is that you'll think Banks could have done a better job.

End note. The books referred to in the first paragraph are: "The Beans of Egypt Maine," by Carolyn Chute (Harcourt Brace, 1986); "Beaming Sonny Home" by Cathie Pelletier (Crown, 1991), and "Modern Baptists" by James Wilcox (Perennial Library, 1983).

The trailerpark is the Granite State Trailerpark in Catamount, New Hampshire. The first and longest story, "The Guinea Pig Lady", introduces the reader to the residents of the twelve-unit park. The time is the late 1970's. Subsequent stories focus on different residents, either before or after The Guinea Pig Lady was overrun and overwhelmed by the rodents she cared for in her trailer. By the end of this book of interrelated stories, the trailerpark has become a community of the weird and the wacky, the hurt and the haunted, the defeated and the resigned. It is, I suppose, a microcosm of the then-contemporary United States, at least as viewed by Russell Banks.

TRAILERPARK provided a relaxed, undemanding reading experience. It was moderately entertaining. But it is not the sort of book that one would read or enjoy primarily for its plot. Instead, the book must succeed or fail based on its characters and what it has to say about life in America-qua-the Granite State Trailerpark. The characters are realistic, but only one of them stands out (the old fisherman, Merle Ring). As for "life in America", it ultimately is a rather empty and lonely existence, for most dulled by alcohol or marijuana. Banks frequently becomes somewhat didactic, especially through the many aphorisms with which he sprinkles the book, only some of which rang true to me. (For example: "Most people can either only give love or receive it, rarely both." I can agree that is the case for some people, but most?)

For me, the best parts were the accounts of activities with which I was relatively unfamiliar - especially, ice-fishing. There also were some nice descriptions of the upper New England of the time (which persists even to today), such as this one: "The old buildings, designed and constructed when labor was cheap and materials plentiful, grow older and shabbier and eventually fall, to be replaced by asphalt lots or else by corrugated iron, sheet metal and plastic structures whose function, regardless of the name of the building or the owner, seems to be strictly that of temporary storage."

As I read these stories, I assigned each a grade of one to five (similar to Amazon stars, I guess). None of the stories was so compelling or well-written to warrant five stars; none was so execrable to merit only one. The average for the thirteen stories was 3.3. Hence, the award of three Amazon stars. This was my introduction to Russell Banks. It probably is unfair to judge an author based on only one of his works, especially one that might now be somewhat dated (TRAILERPARK was first published in 1981). But the book did not do enough for me to make a strong case for sampling other works by Banks.

TRAILERPARK

Russell Banks is a new author for me and one I am so very glad and fortunate that I found. This book by Banks will certainly NOT be the last one I stick my nose into. I plan on reading every single book this man has written.

TRAILERPARK takes us on a journey to the Granite State Trailerpark where a complete cast of different, unusual, and extraordinary people reside. Banks has combined a total of 15 different short stories that all blend into one amazing and shocking conclusion that this reader never saw headed her way.

We meet each of the residents of the Granite State Trailerpark and learn their life stories. Each person has had their cross to bear, their fortunes and misfortunes to live and deal with. While they are all neighbors in this small community of trailers, their being neighbors doesn't necessarily mean they are friends.

The inhabitants of this trailer community vary in age, race, job, beliefs. There is Terry Constant, a black man, who lives with his sister, Connie, who is a nurse. Terry doesn't work, but will do odd jobs around the park to help out and to earn some cash. His sister, Connie, finds work caring for a dying man, and ends up staying in New Hampshire to work and live.

We also meet up with Flora, also known as the Guinea Pig Lady. This creates a problem for the entire trailer park when it's discovered Flora [who doesn't seem to really be all 'there'} has hundreds of the nasty little creatures living with her in her trailer -- and this is a definite no pets allowed community. Read and laugh while the people voice their opinions as to what should be done to Flora and her little piggy friends.

The manager and go-to person here is Marcelle Chagnon, a bulky and out-spoken woman who works hard to keep things in decent condition at the park and also works hard at living her life after some hard times in her past. Marcelle is a kind and caring person; learning of her past broke my heart and had me in tears.

The character list goes on and on and in each story we meet another person living at the park. We learn of their heartaches and of their happiness, we learn of loves and lives lost, we feel their hopes for the future and feel their pain from the past. Each character is rolled into the recipe of the book and every person is inter-twined in the short stories. The last story relays the huge and exciting ending to a book that was different, exciting, and fun to read.

Come on over to the Granite State Trailerpark where joy and sorrow walk hand-in-hand, everyone is always looking at and out for their neighbor -- depending on who that neighbor is. Trouble follows some of the tenants, love finds others, happiness cannot be obtained by some of the others.

They say money can't buy happiness and this is certainly the case at this trailer park. Join the zany cast of characters as their true human emotions come to light. Walk into these people's lives and see how cruel and/or how wonderful life can be for them. Enter into their world, past and present, and discover how they ended up living in a run-down, yet well-kept trailer park where anything can and will probably happen to you if you live there long enough.

Russell Banks can write and proves it in this book. I look forward to enjoying many more of his works.

Thank you.

Pam

Russell Banks is a recent find for me and this book - the third of his I have read following Continental Drift and The Reserve - was no disappointment.

It is a collection of 16 short stories centered on a community living in a trailer park in northern New England.

This park is a kind of symbol of the United States in the 1970s where different kinds of people are forced to live side by side whether they like it or not.

Banks has created a cast that could easily fall into stereotypes - repressed homosexual, retired army officer, black nurse, teenage pothead, eccentric old man, unfaithful young wife etc - but he avoids this trap, thanks to his style which manages to be both sharp and understated at the same time.

He conveys not just the personalities of the individuals but also the communal personality of the trailer park.

He does so with particular skill in the best story - The Fisherman - which ends the collection and brings virtually all the characters together in a memorable final scene. This is one of the best things I have read in years.

The Guinea Pig Lady is another fine work and, like The Fisherman, is more of a novella than a short story.

In fact, I feel that Banks is better with these longer pieces as they give him more room to develop an idea. Some of the shorter pieces are feeble in comparison and not up to scratch.

I just finished this book; it is a fast read that provides really good descriptions of the human condition. It is insightful, and in places, quite eloquent. The depictions are so real that you will recognize the people in the story, but have to change their names.

This is one of my favorite collections of short stories! Russell Banks is a master. And his world is colorful and vivid. Read it years ago and still think of it...

Trailerpark by Russell Banks is a collection of thirteen inter-related short stories about the past, present and future residents of a small rural New Hampshire trailerpark. The order of the stories is nonchronologic. Each of the vividly drawn cast appears in multiple stories, sometimes as the featured character and sometimes in a supporting role.
These are characters who are misfits in a number of different ways and for a number of different reasons. Mental illness, alcoholism, old fashion stupidity, laziness and poor self image are only some of the factors accounting for the unfulfilled lives so masterfully described in the pages of this very interesting book. These are characters who are generally unloved and unlovable. Their actions many times are self defeating and completely wrongheaded. Yet, they are all supremely human and in a very strange way give Trailerpark a feel that is life affirming in spite of itself. Highly recommended.