The Darling - Hardcover

Banks, Russell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060197358 ISBN 13: 9780060197353

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2004

Synopsis

Having fled to West Africa in the late 1970s for her work as a political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah Musgrave befriends notorious former Liberian president Charles Taylor, whom she helps to escape from prison and who years later leads a rebellion that threatens Hannah's family. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

Just what kind of novel is Russell Banks’ The Darling? The author is, after all, one of the most impressive writers in America today, and his work (in such books as Affliction has been marked by its refusal to deal with the parochial: Banks’ subject is always ambitious in every sense of the word, and this new book may be his most large scale yet. The Darling is a massive, multi-stranded novel about Africa today.

Banks’ heroine, Hannah Musgrave, is not a woman at ease with herself. Others might be happy with supportive parents and enthusiastic lovers, but Hannah finds that their blandishments do not plug the gap in her life. She abandons her comfortable middle-class existence and plunges into the dark terrorist world of the ruthless group known as the Weather Underground. Soon she is on the run from the FBI and takes refuge in Liberia in West Africa. It seems that her life will now change forever, as she marries a youthful politician and adopts the role of wife (and even mother). In the past, Hannah's life had been at threat from her own, internal forces, but now she finds that it is her environment which is the powder keg. The ruthless and corrupt military state which is Liberia (long shored up by America) is about to be plunged into massive bloodshed, and Hannah finds that all she has come to hold dear is at risk.

This is powerful and far-reaching writing, on a scale that few novelists (on either side of the Atlantic) are prepared to tackle today. The nearest modern equivalent to this epic novel of character, set against a seething backdrop is probably the work of Robert Stone, but the shade of Graham Greene is often evoked, and not to Banks' discredit. The conflicted heroine is a wonderful creation, and the turbulent dangerous world of war-torn Liberia is brilliantly evoked. -- Barry Forshaw

Review

'Magnificent I believed every word of it, forgot I was reading fiction. Russell Banks has created a story that is both shattering and reassuring, and a narrator, Bone, who will stay with me for the rest of my life.' Roddy Doyle on RULE OF THE BONE Everything about Affliction is impressive-- [It] will not let go of you, I swear, until you turn the last page." Elmore Leonard on AFFLICTION 'Russell Banks's work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time. You find the craziness of false dreams, the political inequalities, and somehow the sliver of redemption. I trust his portraits of America more than any other -- the burden of it, the need for it, the hell of it.' Michael Ondaatje on CLOUDSPLITTER

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060197358
• ISBN 13: 9780060197353
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 391