Product Description

A powerful literary classic from one of contemporary fiction's most acclaimed and important writers, Russell Banks's Continental Drift is a masterful novel of hope lost and gained, and a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #115010 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Released on: 2007-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
On the extravagant, shallow promises of his brother, Bob Dubois, 30, a burnt-out New Hampshire oil burner repairman, takes his family to Florida. There the Duboises meet their destiny in the form of a counterpoint familythat of Vanise Dorsinville, a woman who has fled Haiti with her infant and nephew for a better life in the U.S. PW praised Continental Drift as a "vital, compelling novel."
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Review

"An excellent novel...An important novel because of the precise manner in which it reflects the spiritual yearning and materialistic frenzy of our contemporary life. It is also an extremely skillful book, both in its writing, which is impeccable, and in the way it unfolds...Always, Banks writes with tremendous knowledge, convictions, and authenticity." -- Chicago Tribune

"At its deepest level, Continental Drift is about a culture imagining itself. Black, white, New World, Old World, living and dead, animal and mineral, a startling array of voices perform this act of creation. Banks has captured the din, clamor, and chaos of these voices clearly and convincingly." -- John Edgar Wideman

"Grandeur...Tremendously ambitious...A powerful, disturbing study in moral 'drift,' confusion, and uncertainty." -- San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

"Russell Banks is a writer of extraordinary power." -- Gail Caldwell,Boston Globe

"Russell Banks...explores the themes of good and evil, fate and freedom, success and failure, love and sex, and racism and poverty through alternating chapters focusing of dual protagonists: Bob Dubois, 30, who forsakes his dead-end job as an oil burner repairman in New Hampshire to begin a new life in Florida, and Vanise Dorsinville, a young, illiterate Haitian mother who seeks refuge from poverty by fleeing to America...Original in conception, gripping in execution." -- Newsday

"Unrelenting...A vigorous and original novel." -- New York Review of Books

Early in Continental Drift, Russell Banks compares the migrations of humanity to those of the elements: tides, winds, whole landmasses making their well-mapped, decorous circuit of the planet. One of the marvels of this book is the way it combines such an aerial perspective with particular, earthbound lives. Seen from ground level--the vantage point of most lives--this perpetual exodus has little of the bland and unimpeachable brutality of natural disaster. Instead, it can look heroic--a dogged determination to cheat entropy and death for as long as possible. This persistence, "an old-fashioned, biblical kind of heroism," powers the migratory lives in Continental Drift and makes even their eventual wreckage a source of celebration. -- The Nation, James Marcus

About the Author

Russell Banks is the former president of Cities of Refuge North America, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. Banks lives in upstate New York, and he was the New York State author from 2004–2008.

Customer Reviews

Incredibly thought provoking,beautifully written
This was one of the best books I've ever read. I learned alot from this book,alot about my own life and the lives of the people around me.Russell Banks hits quite a few nerves in his depiction of the American Dream and all the trappings of our overly materialistic,shallow lives. Banks beautifully blends two seperate lives on a collision course with destiny.Human nature at its best and its worst.Everyone should be able to identify with the main character Bob Dubois, a tragic figure who doesnt know who he is or what he wants.Life just happens to him. On the other side is Vanise Dorsinville and her nephew Claude two poor Haitians who seek a new life in America.The misery they endure will haunt you.Banks' knowledge of the Haitian culture was phenominal.What a remarkable book!

Morally adrift in contemporary America
Truly a great book of the past few decades. Continental Drift parallels the lives of two individuals co-existing in North America. The main character, Bob Dubois, is a mediciocre, who flees his drab life in New Hampshire for the riches of Florida. In the process, Banks comments on racism, sex and materialism. In contrast, is the tragic story of a young Haitian woman seeking the American dream. Bob Dubois is a ghost of man morally; adrift in a society that rewards greed, consumerism and de-emphasizes love and committment. The Haitian story reflects on poverty and the moral bankrupcy it extracts. Russell Banks is one of our best writers today. Don't miss this book.

Excellent
This is Banks' finest novel.

Bob Dubois, is a powerful and well developed protagonist; a blue-collar worker in snowy New Hampshire who tries to escape the hopelessness of his dead-end existence and fizzling marriage by traveling south to Florida. But Bob loses control of his situation, and his predestined path is dictated by forces outside of his control, just as plate tectonics dictates the drift of our wayward continents.

Dubois is a beautifully written character. He's a moral man who tries to do the right thing, and in the end it's his morality that brings the tragedy to its conclusion. On the other side of this collision course are two Hatian immigrants with which Bob shares everything and nothing. Banks once again shows his knowledge of Caribbean cultures - a reoccurring theme in his novels.

Love, sex, desperation, hope, good vs. evil, racism, free-will versus destiny, these are all elements interwoven into a tightly written story. An excellent novel.