The Reserve - Hardcover

Banks, Russell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747593671 ISBN 13: 9780747593676

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2008

Synopsis

July, 1936. It is the height of the Depression, and the looming threat of Fascism is spreading across Europe. And somewhere high above the Adirondack mountains, beautiful and doomed, floats the vast Hindenburg airship. Vanessa Cole is the stunning debutante daughter of the famous brain surgeon Carter Cole. Notorious for her scandalous affairs with the rich and famous, she has returned to her parents' home in upstate New York after the collapse of her second marriage. Rumours are rife as the family gathers to celebrate the 4th of July at the rustic but elegant Adirondack Camp deep in their privately-owned wilderness, The Reserve. This scene of luxury and privilege is disturbed by the arrival of the internationally famous painter and political radical, Jordan Groves, who brazenly lands his bi-plane on the pristine Second Lake. Groves, celebrated as much for his leftist politics, Hemingwayesque exploits and romantic conquests as for his art, is easy prey for Vanessa Cole's blend of electrifying charm and destructiveness. But in order to protect his two young sons and his marriage, already made fragile by his years of compulsive infidelity, he must try to keep his distance. Especially when it becomes clear that Vanessa carries a deeply scarring family secret. The Reserve explores what happens when powerful personalities from opposite ends of the social spectrum begin to break the rules. Part scandalous love story, part murder mystery, it is a gripping, exhilarating novel from one of America's finest writers.

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 critically acclaimed author of The Darling, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter (the film by Atom Egoyan won the Grand Prix and International Critics Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival), Rule of the Bone and Continental Drift, amongst others. A winner of numerous fellowships and prizes, he writes regularly for Vanity Fair, New York Times Book Review, Esquire, and Harper's. Russell Banks currently lives in upstate New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0747593671
• ISBN 13: 9780747593676
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304