The Reserve [Paperback]

 

 

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(3.5 stars) With THE RESERVE, set in an exclusive private resort in the expansive wilderness park of the Adirondack mountains in north-eastern New York, Russell Banks takes us back to the mid nineteen thirties. While the Great Depression has left its detrimental impact on the impoverished local population, the rich and famous don't have to adjust their lifestyle at all... Within the confines of the resort, Banks explores two distinct social strata by focusing of four central characters who, each in their own way, are attempting to challenge the established class conventions and barriers through their actions.

We are literally flown to the shores of Second Tamarack Lake and into the midst of a July 4th party at one of the luxurious estates. Jordan Groves, artist and "man of action" flies his small pontoon plane, illegally, right into the midst of the upper-crust get together, hosted by well-known brain surgeon Dr. Cole and his pretty, yet subdued wife. Vanessa, their daughter, beautiful and wild, is the personified seductress and it is not difficult to guess who will be the next object if her charm offensive.

Jordan Groves, loosely based on Rockwell Kent, has reached sufficient notoriety, as an artist and writer /illustrator of travel accounts to wild places and also as a ladies man, that he can ignore, usually successfully, the confines of his lower class upbringing. He is also wealthy and has his beautiful, accomplished wife, Alicia, to show for who has the correct credentials. The forth principal protagonist is Hubert St. Germain, the taciturn local park guide, who like other locals is forced, due to the lack of other employment opportunities, to provide varied services to the wealthy resident owners in the Reserve and their illustrious guests.

A tragedy at the Cole estate triggers a series of events that affects all four protagonists in different, yet in each case dramatic, ways. Banks uses the unfolding events to develop psychological portraits of the four individuals and sets them against each other - physically and emotionally. Predictably, there were childhood dramas, unresolved sufferings and more. Deeper questions of "what is truth" stand against "what is betrayal" and "what is love". For Vanessa, for example, "...truth was more a coloration of reality than the organizing principle of its underlying structure... It was something one could assert and a moment later turn around and deny, with no sense of there being a contradiction." Jordan, by contrast has found a definition of "love" for his wife that, at the same time, allows constant sexual conquests without feeling regrets. Alicia is forced to questions more than her marriage and the morality of her own behaviour. Hubert, in the end has to confront the consequences of being truthful to the detriment of his own and other people's happiness.

The build-up towards the culmination of drama seen through the eyes of the four protagonists, given the author ample opportunity to fill in blanks in their respective backgrounds and personal and emotional make-ups. The intimate scenario of the Adirondacks is interrupted by short sections that pulls the reader forward by a year - to 1937 and the Spanish Civil War. These sections, while they give insights into future events that impact the protagonists, they are too short to get a sense of connectedness. Similarly, the sighting by Groves of the German Zeppelin airship, 'Hindenburg' over the mountains feels too deliberate an incident and is not well integrated into the story.

In a lesser wordsmith, this story would have read like a light romantic novel with some disasters thrown in. Banks goes deeper into the underlying issues of the day and the ethical questions emerging from the crises. Unfortunately, the central characters and those surrounding them are, to a certain degree, stereotyped rather than explored in their individuality. The result is a novel not as convincing as one would have liked. [Friederike Knabe]

Awash with Hollywood sensibility, The Reserve with all of its over-the-top melodrama remains a compelling study of adultery, murder, and sexual and emotional obsession. Possessed of an unashamedly cinematic quality, Banks' novel is peppered with an assortment of colourful characters: the misunderstood artist, the brooding and gruff mountain guide, the beautiful, but half-crazy young heiress, and the wealthy matriarch who holds a long-buried family secret.

In the Tamarack Lake area of the Adirondacks, a place of dark and lonely Nordic thoughtfulness a vast space opens up between lake and forest and mountain and sky when nine people are gathered to celebrate Dr. Cole's 1936 annual Fourth of July Celebration. Here at Rangeview, the largest of only half-dozen rough-hewn log camps, a few of which are elaborately luxurious, Carter and Evelyn Cole wine and dine with their eminently well-connected friends, the men and their wives who have made a great deal of money buying and selling stocks and bonds in the roaring 1920's.

Also in attendance is Vanessa, the Coles' only child. Adopted and at thirty, married and divorced twice, Vanessa has remained childless, "barren," as she puts it. A disconsolate and rather wayward, girl, she's more content to walk by the rocky seashore with a soft wind sifting the tall pines behind her, than join her parents in their patriotic festivities. For months now, Vanessa has been unhappy, perhaps because she's realized that this scene with her parents and their well-to-do friends is just not hers anymore.

This is a world where the mountains and forests and lakes and streams are held for the exclusive use and enjoyment of members and their guests, and is off-limits to strangers and tourists. So Vanessa is surprised when she hears an airplane growing louder in the distance, a seaplane with two large pontoons that touches down on the far side of the lake. When the pilot introduces himself as Gordon Groves, Vanessa immediately recognizes the famous artist.

Known mostly for his graphic work - woodcuts, etchings, prints, Groves has become increasingly known, both in the United States and the Soviet Union for his radical leftist politics. Of course, the attraction between Jordan and Vanessa is instant, and as her cheek nearly brushes him and pulls away, neither of them can deny this electric sexual energy that passes between them, and in typically rebellious fashion, she begs him to take her for a ride in the airplane.

When he lets her fly dangerously close to the mountains, and then leaves her to walk alone back to her family's cabin, the stage is set for a battle of wills. For Jordan proves to be totally enraptured by the heiress and enveloped by a light that seems to emanate from inside her. When an incident at the club Tamarack Club Estates, involving her angers him, he blames her for what she thought she knew about him. Then an unusual request from her charts him on a course, which ends up threatening his marriage to his beloved Alicia.

Banks fills his pages with shame and remorse and broken-down marriages. Jordan ends up finding himself caught in secrets and lies, rumors and gossip, while the author paints a portrait of an egocentric man, blindsided by his own arrogant self-image. In the end all is mired in histrionics and melodrama, kidnapping and imprisonment, with the plot hinging on a fatal accident involving a shot gun and a set of lurid photos - possibly kiddie porn that may or may not exist - and a fire that proves to be the climax to the events of this over-the-top but always entertaining novel. Mike Leonard March 08.

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