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The Sweet Hereafter (Hardcover)

by Russell Banks (Author)

4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (83 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 272 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 033032215X
ISBN-13: 978-0330322157
Shipping Weight: 549 g

Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (83 customer reviews)

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Product Description

From Amazon.com

Atom Egoyan's Oscar-nominated The Sweet Hereafter is a good movie, remarkably faithful to the spirit of Russell Banks's novel of the same name, but Banks's book is twice as good. With the cool logic of accreting snowflakes, his prose builds a world--a small U.S. town near Canada--and peoples it with four vivid, sensitive souls linked by a school-bus tragedy: the bus driver; the widowed Vietnam vet who was driving behind the bus, waving at his kids, when it went off the road; the perpetually peeved negligence lawyer who tries to shape the victims' heartaches into a winning case; and the beauty-queen cheerleader crippled by the crash, whose testimony will determine everyone's fate.

We experience the story from inside the heads of the four characters in turn--each knowing things the others don't, each misunderstanding the facts in his or her own way. The method resembles Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Gilbert Sorrentino's stunning Aberration of Starlight, but Banks's achievement is most comparable to John Updike's tales of ordinary small-towners preternaturally gifted with slangy eloquence, psychological insights, and alertness to life's tiniest details.

Egoyan's film is haunting but vague--it leaves viewers in the dark regarding several critical plot points. Banks's book is more haunting still, and precise, making every revelation count, with a finale far superior to that of the film. It's also wittier than the too-sober flick: the lawyer dismisses the dome-dwelling hippie parents of one of the crash victims as being "lost in their Zen Little Indians fantasy," which casts a sharp light on them and him, too. He's lost in his calculations of how each parent will fit into the legal system, and the ways in which he fits into the tragedy are lost on him. If only he and the Vietnam-vet dad could read each other's account of their tense first encounter, both of them might get what the other is missing.

Banks's wit is pitiless--it's painful when we discover that the bus driver, who prides herself on interpreting for her stroke-impaired husband, is translating his wise but garbled observations all wrong. The crash turns out not to be the ultimate tragedy: in the cold northern light of its aftermath, we discover that we're all in this alone.

From Publishers Weekly

With resonating effect, Banks ( Continental Drift ; Affliction ) tackles the provocative subject of a fatal accident involving children, and its effect on a small community. On a frigid, snowy morning in the Adirondacks, veteran school bus driver Dolores Driscoll goes off the road, carrying 14 children to their deaths. Dolores survives; hers is the first and the last narrative voice here. Plainspoken and pragmatic, Dolores and her crippled husband have been longtime residents of the close-knit, economically depressed town of Sam Dents, but the accident makes her an outcast. The flat, almost uninflected voice of Vietnam vet and recent widower Billy Ansel, who witnessed the accident, reflects the numbness he now seeks: both his children died in the crash. Though Banks makes too much of Billy's "noble" character, he effectively portrays the man's refuge in drink and his downhill slide. When he introduces the obsessive, enraged voice of New York negligence lawyer Mitchell Stephens, who hopes to manipulate the bereaved into bringing suit against anyone he can find to blame, Banks jolts the narrative into high gear, and uses Stephens's contempt for the grieving parents--their "sagging porches and rusting pickup trucks"--to render a clear sociological portrait of the community. Beautiful teenager Nicholesp ok? Burnell, crippled as a result of her injuries, takes revenge in her own way, propelling the novel to a moving denouement. Banks handles his dark theme with judicious restraint, empathy and compassion; the result is that this book is less downbeat than his previous works--and more powerful. 30,000 first printing; $45,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

83 Reviews

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

4.1 out of 5 stars (83 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Intensely moving, Feb 11 2002

By	Brooke Dolara (Madison, NJ) - See all my reviews

I was perusing the reviews of this book earlier, and I have to agree that this book is one of Russell Banks' most haunting, despondent, and beautiful pieces of prose. The Sweet Hereafter chronicles the story of four individuals who are struggling with the aftermath of a horrific school bus accident, resulting in the deaths of many schoolchildren riding that morning. The book uses four different narrators; there is Delores, the once tough but eternally optimistic driver who now is consumed by guilt. Another voice is Billy Ansel, the ruggedly handsome widower who witnesses the accident from his truck. With the death of his twin son and daughter, Ansel becomes grief-stricken and shuts out any possibility of redemption, offerd in the form of a personal injury lawyer, who placed blame on the town and offers promise of financial reparitions. The lawyer is Mitchell Stephens, who also is reeling from the "death" of a child; his daughter has disappeared into a lifestyle of drugs and detox centers. The fourth and perhaps most intriguing voice is Nicole Burnell, a former cheerleader now paralyzed by the accident. She is a crucial witness for Stephens, and her surprising actions reveal ambiguous motives. I can't really reveal too much more about her, but she is the most interesting character in the book, in part because it is never clear why she does what she does. The book also has a heatwrenching epilogue, demonstating that, in a story like this, there can be no neat sense of closure. Rather, the devastation of survival plagues and haunts each member of the community, and time does not heal suffering, but rather prolongs it.
Another reviewwer commented that the book was light on dialogue. Indeed, it is. However, I think it is necessary to omit large chunks of conversation, because so much of the book centers on the internal process of grief and the ianbility of hte characters to express their emotions effectively to others. Everything just shuts down, becomes static, and indeed, suspends people in a "sweet hereafter." This is an incredible book by one of the greatest contemporary authors in the United States. The film adaptaion is also stellar, with fantastic work by Ian Holm and a parade of talented Canadian actors.

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5.0 out of 5 stars powerful and moving, Oct 22 2001

By	michigan jean "jeanps" (MI USA) - See all my reviews

I loved this book. I had seen the movie a few years back but decided to try reading the book anyway. It was a good choice. The characters in this book are drawn so well you feel as though you can see them. The author does a great job of making everyone in this book believable and he establishes credible and decent motives for their behaviors that sometimes seem incredible and less than decent.
The book is about the end of innocence. From the loss of the children on the bus, to the loss of a drug addicted child, to the loss of community and finally the loss of one's self in Billy Ansel's case, this books ties it all together. This is my first book by Russell Banks and I'm eager to read the others.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Well-written but poorly-researched, Oct 8 2001

By A Customer

Russell Banks's novel, The Sweet Hereafter, is extremely readable and fast-paced. Banks has put together a gripping story with characters that are strangely off-putting and likable at once. The plot involves some topics which are difficult and painful to consider and fairly unspeakable in nature. He has addressed these taboo topics tastefully.

The characters in this book are very well-developed. Banks offers many insights through these intriguing characters. The plot centers around four main characters caught up in the aftermath of a school bus accident which has killed or maimed 15 children. These characters are Dolores, who drove the bus, Billy Ansel, the widowed father of twins killed in the accident, Mitchell Stephens, an angry, confrontational lawyer on the lookout for clients, and Nichole, the young cheerleader who is paralyzed as a result of the accident. All four tell their stories in their own ways. Each has a different perspective on guilt, grief and regret.
In contrast to his masterful character development, Banks's knowledge of civil litigation is pretty sketchy and often inaccurate. In particular, Banks lacks a basic understanding of deep pockets, sovereign immunity and damage capitation. The book's climax is completely meaningless for those who have an accurate understanding of civil liability and the valuation of cases.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful writing
an incredible book about an accident and how it altered a small town and it's people....truly amazing.... Read more

Published on Oct 17 2001 by Julie

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 star of the year
I enjoyed the way Banks set up the chapters, the story line and the mini plots within the story which all seemed to gel by the last chapter. Read more

Published on Jul 4 2001 by Bridget Hockney

4.0 out of 5 stars IT'S ALL IN THE ANGLES...
Russell Banks' precisely-crafted novel takes an interesting technique -- 4 different views of the same tragedy by 4 different narrators -- and uses it to show that the same chain... Read more

Published on Jun 23 2001 by Larry L. Looney

5.0 out of 5 stars heartbreakingly beautiful
Russell Banks - one of America's best comtemporary writers is one of the masters of characterization - his portrayal of the devastating loss by an upstate New York community is... Read more

Published on Jun 6 2001 by ED