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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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The
Reserve by Russell Banks |
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Rating: |
**** |
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(Highly Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Truth The
title of Russell Banks’ latest novel, The
Reserve, refers to a private refuge for a few wealthy families in the
Adirondacks. The novel is set during the Depression and is packed with
contrasts: the rich and the impoverished; truth and lies; faithfulness and
betrayal; exposure and hiding. Readers will be attracted by some characters
and repelled by others. Along the way, we keep turning the pages, as Banks
carefully unfolds his plot and deepens our understanding of each character.
Here’s an excerpt, pp. 31-33, describing the
protagonist, an artist who lives at the edge of the reserve, and refers to
other key characters: At
six, well before the rest of the family woke, Jordan Groves
left his bed. He shaved and dressed for work in loose, paint-spattered
dungarees and sweatshirt and came down the wide front stairs to the living
room and went into the kitchen and let the dogs out and the cats in. Most
days he carried a chunk of cheese and some bread directly to his studio and
made a pot of coffee there and sat contemplatively for an hour in front of
yesterday's picture before setting to work on it. It was the best time of the
day for him, best for thinking, best for work. Today, however, he lingered at
the house. He built a fire in the kitchen stove, let the two dogs back inside
and fed them and the four cats, and reloaded the wood box—normally Alicia and
the boys' morning chores—and waited for the others to come down. Around
seven thirty Wolf, still in pajamas, padded down the back stairs from the
children's wing and headed straight to the icebox for milk, when he realized
that his father sat in the rocker by the bay window, looking out.
Characteristically somber, the boy said good morning, and Jordan Groves
smiled, said, "Hello, son," and, continuing to look out the window,
resumed his thoughts. He was replaying the events of the previous evening,
trying to recall exactly what was said and done and by whom and why. He was pretty sure he
understood Dr. Cole and knew what his intentions and needs were. And the
others he didn't linger over: they
were all who and what they seemed to be. The girl, though, Vanessa Von
Heidenstamm, was pretty much a mystery to him. She was not who and what she
seemed. But the one who was most mysterious to him, the one whose intentions
and needs and behavior he understood not at all, was the man himself, Jordan
Groves. Why had he taken her up in his airplane and let her fly it so
dangerously close to the mountains at night? And why had he left her there at
the pond, left her to walk alone back to her family's camp at the Second
Lake? The view from the window gave
on to the Tamarack River where it swerved away from the house and grounds
into a broad oxbow and widened and ran north for three hundred yards of
smooth, slow-running, deep water—more a pond here than a river. Directly in
the artist's line of sight was the wooden riverside hangar he had built the
summer he bought his airplane. Four years later, he still liked the sturdy,
wide, four-square look of the structure. He had come in last night by
moonlight reflected off the river. He had winched the airplane out of the
water and onto the ramp and into the boathouse, and by the time he got up to
the house, Alicia and the boys were already in bed asleep. Jordan stayed
downstairs in his study for a while and read the new Steinbeck, In Dubious
Battle, and, as was his habit, didn't go up to bed himself until
midnight, and when he slid in next to her, Alicia did not appear to waken,
which relieved him. Wolf was the younger of the
boys, just turned six. His brother, whose name was Bear, was eight. When his
sons were born, Jordan had insisted on naming them for animals he
admired—despite considerable resistance from their mother and her Austrian
family, who said it might be all right for red Indians to name their children
after animals, but not for white people. If Bear had been a girl, Jordan
would have named her Puma. Wolf he would have named Peregrine. He said he wanted
his children to be inspired
all their lives to live up to what they were called, and since he was a
devout atheist he wasn't going to name them after saints. "No Christian
names," he declared, and no family names. Aside from Jordan himself and
Alicia, there was no one in either family worth emulating. If when they
became adults his sons wished to go by their middle names, which as a compromise
had been drawn from Alicia's and his genealogies, that would
be all right with him. But he was sure it wouldn't happen. By
then they will have become
their names, he said. Just as, for better or worse, he had become
Jordan, and their mother had become Alicia. The
reference to thinking about Vanessa as not being who and what she seemed
turns out to be quite prescient. Banks is a fine writer, and he captured both
time, place and characters with skill. The
Reserve is a pleasure to read, and is highly recommended. Steve
Hopkins, March 21, 2008 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the April 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Reserve.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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