Sweet Hereafter: A Novel by Russell
Banks
Wish I Had Read This First...
Atom Egoyans Oscar-nominated The Sweet Hereafter is a good movie,
remarkably faithful to the spirit of Russell Bankss novel of the same name,
but Bankss book is twice as good. With the cool logic of accreting
snowflakes, his prose builds a world--a small U.S. town near Canada--and
peoples it with four vivid, sensitive souls linked by a school-bus tragedy:
the bus driver; the widowed Vietnam vet who was driving behind the bus,
waving at his kids, when it went off the road; the perpetually peeved
negligence lawyer who tries to shape the victims heartaches into a
winning case; and the beauty-queen cheerleader crippled by the crash,
whose testimony will determine everyones fate.We experience the story
from inside the heads of the four characters in turn--each knowing things
the others dont, each misunderstanding the facts in his or her own way.
The method resembles Faulkners The Sound and the Fury and Gilbert
Sorrentinos stunning Aberration of Starlight, but Bankss achievement is
most comparable to John Updikes tales of ordinary small-towners
preternaturally gifted with slangy eloquence, psychological insights, and
alertness to lifes tiniest details. Egoyans film is haunting but vague--it
leaves viewers in the dark regarding several critical plot points. Bankss
book is more haunting still, and precise, making every revelation count,
with a finale far superior to that of the film. Its also wittier than the too-
sober flick: the lawyer dismisses the dome-dwelling hippie parents of one
of the crash victims as being lost in their Zen Little Indians fantasy, which
casts a sharp light on them and him, too. Hes lost in his calculations of
how each parent will fit into the legal system, and the ways in which he fits
into the tragedy are lost on him. If only he and the Vietnam-vet dad could
read each others account of their tense first encounter, both of them might
get what the other is missing. Bankss wit is pitiless--its painful when we
discover that the bus driver, who prides herself on interpreting for her
stroke-impaired husband, is translating his wise but garbled observations
all wrong. The crash turns out not to be the ultimate tragedy: in the cold
northern light of its aftermath, we discover that were all in this alone.
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This is a beautifully written book about the aftermath of a tragedy in a small
New England town. A school bus accident kills many of the towns children
and the novel examines the complexity of grief, hope, and the need for
assignment of blame - - blame to make sense of and sort out the
unfathomable. It examines how people withdraw into themselves, uniting
only in the commonality of their shared tragedy. Each person deals with
the tragedy deeply and we are given witness to the strength and resilience
of some vs. the fragility and hopelessness of others.
The novel is told from the vantage point of three townspeople - - the bus
driver, a 14 year-old survivor and the parent of 2 dead children - - and a
lawyer. The lawyer has come to town to find clients in order to build a
case and help assign blame.
This is an incredible book, multi-layered, beautifully written, and one that
you will not soon forget.
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