Customer Reviews

The Sweet Hereafter

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a great book that blew me away with its many layers of story and the credible tension that Russell Banks was able to create out of such a simple premise, it almost reads like a mystery. He writes in such a way that he opens up the small town of Sam Dent and deposits you right in the middle of it leaving you feeling like you personally know all the characters or might have once lived there yourself. It is also an interesting character study and from my experience realistic in the way each person here deals differently with grief; Some self-destruct while others find new strength, all want to lay blame somewhere and everyone in this once innocent town is irreversibly changed. Banks manages to show all sides of these ordinary characters, even the negative and because this was written from 4 different perspectives almost anyone will be able to find a piece of themselves in one of them. Ultimately it will leave you looking at yourself and those around you differently because every town has its secrets.

As I said the story is simple; One snowy morning a school bus goes off the road and into the frozen waters of a small American town, 14 children are lost in the accident and its citizens are confronted with life's most disturbing question when the worst happens who do you blame and how do you cope. We then enter surviving school bus driver Deloris Driscoll's head as she recalls the morning of the accident and introduces us to the town and its members while making stops along the bus route.

We then switch to widower and war veteran Billy Ansel who is following the bus on his way to work, his story is heartbreaking and full of secrets. The narration then turns to New York lawyer and pariah Mitchell Stevens who has come to Sam Dent like all the other lawyers and media to try and make a buck off the tragedy, surprisingly I really enjoyed his view as you can`t always judge a book (lawyer)by its cover. We also hear form 14 year old Nicole Burnell, who before the accident was a cheerleader and the town princess and is now confined to a wheelchair, her part in the story shocked me.

I highly recommend this and now hope to see if the movie can live up to this amazing book.

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.

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.

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.

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. Perhaps what drew me to this in the first place was tone- 19 children die in a bus accident. As a mother of a child who died, perhaps I was searching for common ground. It really doesn't exist as you are in a world of your own. But the book was very well written nonetheless.

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 truly heartrending. Banks gets to the core of his characters and makes you feel as if you know them personally. I also recommend the film of this book, well-directed by Atom Egoyan.

"The Sweet Hereafter" is a sensitive and perceptive novel about what happens to a small town when it loses a number of its children in a senseless accident. The novel is narrated by different people, all of them involved with the incident in one way or another. I admire Banks' ability to change voice from one person to the next, and the way he maintains suspense not only from a plot point of view (what happens next?) but by reliability of narrator (that's what he said; what will she say?). My only gripe is that it's a rather short book and could have gone into more detail. But isn't it better for a novel to be too short than too long?

Russell The Sweet Hereafter is a book filled with events and surprises. His style of relating the story or I should said stories as there were inter-linked events and situations revolving all the 4 main characters. This novel started with a tragic school bus accident on a snowing morning. Fates changed and questions asked. Who to blame? The bus driver? The weather? Or other factors? A lawyer was brought into the picture to investigate. He began the search for the truth. He never anticipated that his perspective of life and living would alter too.

This novel is uniquely written in a way which readers can see from different sides of the story. Aftermath of the accident was multi-dimensionally written. Every victim had his/her own perspective. The novel was divided into various parts whereby I could hear from people involved directly or indirectly to the accident. Revealing many dark secrets and details.. From Dolores, the bus driver to a young girl 's viewpoints showed how people react differently and what they do when the same thing happened. Amazing discovery of human nature's complexity and authenticity.What a cruel world!

Banks created intrinsic characters and vividly sequenced the events. This novel also had a touch of irony and realistic. It's cleverly concluded with justification. Quite a remarkable attempt!

The book starts out with a school bus accident involving the children of a small American town near Canada. Russell Banks uses the perspective of four different individuals to tell the story. He begins with Dolores Driscoll, the driver of the school bus. From her perspective, the reader is introduced to the main characters. We also see the crash from her point of view. Next we see the view of Billy Ansel, a widowed Vietnam vet who was following the bus and waving at his twin children at the time of the accident. From him we can see the impact it had on him to lose his children in the bus accident. From there, Banks introduces us to Mitchell Stephens, Esquire, a big time lawyer who has come to cash in on the towns' pain and sufferng. From him we can see an outside perspective on the town and the effect it had on the people when they lost their children. We then see the view of young Nicole Burnell, probably the most heart breaking and eye opening view of them all. We are shown the hurt and pain that she and her family go though after the accident. Before the accident she was a pretty, popular, cheerleader who had her whole life ahead of her, but then she becomes paralized from the accident. From here, Banks again takes us back to Dolores Driscell where we see the town finally starting to recover from the losses and remember life before the accident. This book was not what I was expecting, and I was very surprised by how well it was written. I would recommend it to anyone willing to step out of their own little world and see it from someone else's point of view.

The Sweet Hereafter is a definate must read. The plot gets you interested and keeps you there, it flows extremely well, and it is very easy to relate to. The different viewpoints of the book work well together to show you an all-around view of what happens to a small, poor town when the unthinkable happens. Russel Banks portrays every sort of stand, from guilt, to mourning, to anger, to helplessness, by looking at the tragedy from the viewpoints of the driver who blames herself, the mourning father, the anger-filled lawyer, and a survivor of the wreck who will be crippled for life. The reader feels a certain connection to the characters in the novel, likes them, dislikes them, feels their pain and their sorrow. But all around it is a lesson in viewing with an open mind a situation and the way people react to not only this tragedy, but everyday life.