The Reserve - Softcover

Banks, Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0676979734 ISBN 13: 9780676979732

Publisher: Random House of Canada Ltd, 2009

Synopsis

In this compelling novel – a cross between Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Aviator – the acclaimed modern master takes us to riveting new territory.

Part love story, part murder mystery, Russell Banks’s The Reserve is as gripping as it is beautifully written, set in a pre-WWII world of class, politics, art, love and madness.

Vanessa Cole is a stunningly beautiful and wild heiress, her parents’ adopted only daughter. Twice-married, she has been scandalously linked to rich and famous men. On the night of July 4, 1936, inside the Cole family’s remote Adirondack Mountain enclave, known as the Reserve, Vanessa will lose her father to a heart attack – and meet Jordan Groves, a seductively carefree local artist whose leftist political loyalties to his working class neighbours are undercut by his wealth and his clientele. Jordan is easy prey for Vanessa’s electrifying charm. But the heiress carries a dark family secret. Unhinged by her father’s unexpected death, she begins to spin out of control, manipulating and destroying the lives of all who cross her path.

Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondacks to war-torn Spain and fascist Germany, filled with characters that pierce the heart, The Reserve is a passionately romantic novel of suspense and drama that adds a new dimension to this acclaimed author’s extraordinary repertoire.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

Review:

'It's the 1930s, and it's war up there - dogfights in the air above Spain, the Hindenburg cruising with its swastikas toward a fiery fate; and down below, in the sublime Adirondack forests surrounding a secluded rustic playground of the very rich, it's a class war of love and madness. Russell Banks puts it all together in The Reserve, a cool noir thriller in which nothing happens as you imagine it will. This is new and wonderful turf for this masterful storyteller' WILLIAM KENNEDY 'This is a vividly imagined book. It has the romantic atmosphere of those great 1930s tales in film and prose, and it speeds the reader along from its first pages The Reserve is a pleasure well worth savouring' SCOTT TUROW 'An urgent, passionate, compelling panorama. The writing is thoughtful and disciplined, and the memory of its images continues to disturb me. It deserves to stand beside Conrad and Greene.' Guardian 'If you've never read Russell Banks it's time you acquired the habit.' Elmore Leonard

About the Author:

RUSSELL BANKS is the author of a dozen novels and short story collections, including Cloudsplitter, Rule of the Bone, Trailerpark, Continental Drift, The Sweet Hereafter and, most recently, The Darling. He is founding president of the North American Network of Cities of Asylum and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He lives in upstate New York and is currently the New York State Author.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House of Canada Ltd
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0676979734
• ISBN 13: 9780676979732
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 287