Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #815708 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-08
• Released on: 1996-03-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"A compelling novel....Banks achieves effects at once beautiful and brutal. A virtuoso performance." -- --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Russell Banks was raised in New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts. The eldest of four children, he grew up in a working-class environment, which has played a major role in his writing.

Mr. Banks (who was the first in his family to go to college) attended Colgate University for less than a semester, and later graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before he could support himself as a writer, he tried his hand at plumbing, and as a shoe salesman and window trimmer. More recently, he has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, University of New Hampshire, New England College, New York University and Princeton University.

A prolific writer of fiction, his titles include Searching for Survivors, Family Life, Hamilton Stark, The New World, The Book of Jamaica, Trailerpark, The Relation of My Imprisonment, Continental Drift, Success Stories, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Bone, and Cloudsplitter. He has also contributed poems, stories and essays to The Boston Globe Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Harper’s, and many other publications.

His works have been widely translated and published in Europe and Asia. Two of his novels have been adapted for feature-length films, The Sweet Hereafter (directed by Atom Goyan, winner of the Grand Prix and International Critics Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival) and Affliction (directed by Paul Schrader, starring Nick Nolte, Willem Dafoe, Sissy Spacek, and James Coburn). He is the screenwriter of a film adaptation of Continental Drift.

Mr. Banks has won numerous awards and prizes for his work, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, Ingram Merrill Award, The St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction, O. Henry and Best American Short Story Award, The John Dos Passos Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and 1998 respectively. Affliction was short listed for both the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Prize and the Irish International Prize.

He has lived in a variety of places, from New England to Jamaica, which have contributed to the richness of his writing. He is currently living in upstate New York. The Angel On The Roof is his first collection of short stories in fifteen years.

Russell Banks is married to the poet Chase Twichell, and is the father of four grown daughters.

Customer Reviews

insightful, masterful
I"m a Jamaican-American who recently returned to Jamaica to live. I saw the book on a remainder table. It's amazing. It captures many essential truths about Jamaican culture and class conflicts during a pivotal time in its history (the 70's), plus it's beautifully and lovingly written. Sometimes the "outsider" perspective gives us important truths, and this is a prime example. If you're at all interested in Jamaica, this is a must read.

One of Russell Bank's very best efforts!
The plot of this early Bank's novel revolves around a vacation to the seductive island of Jamaica by a college professor and his wife. They rent a home with patio and swimming pool on the outskirts of Port Antonio. Servants come on each day to cook and clean. The couple is protected from the turbulence of the island's cultural and political life by a fence made of both wire and social class (not to mention race). But the professor, the narrator of this tale, soon finds himself enjoying the company of the locals; in particular a young Rastafarian who has plenty of powerful Jamaican ganja he is very willing to share. Sure enough, before too much time has elapsed, the professor is smoking all the day long and providing transportation in his rental car to a small group of Marroons and Rastas that stay locally for short periods of time but live up in the mountains where they have their marijuana fields and live in villages with their families.

There are several trips back to the island after the narrator's life is completely transformed by his experiences during the first. His wife no longer accompanies him however as their marraige was one of the first casualities of his abrupt new fascination with Rastfarianism, Marroon culture, and ganja. You can imagine! But what starts out as an adventure full of promise, unfortunately follows an inevitable course ending in sorrow and not a little horror. Any attempt to blithely transcend differences of race and class are doomed, the author seems to be saying. And ganja will not of its own power make a story turn out all right, regardless of it's enormous capacity to create an internal state that seems to be mystically protected from all outward harm. In fact the opposite may be true. Ganja may release traits and fuel decisions that create a trend which rushes towards confrontation with dis-associated, unwanted self-aspects and a pressing need to re-assess one's relationship with the basics of self-preservation and the will to continue living.

This is a compelling, well-written novel that has the advantage of having marijuana as one of its central characters. The role marijuana plays in the story and in fueling the psychological development of the protaganist is handled skillfully and raises interesting questions about what effect heavy use may have on the trajectory of one's life. As a Jamaican travelogue, the book will spellbind as it is really a tour de force of gritty observational writing. Banks obviously harbours a deep love for Jamaica and a well-earned respect for the raw power of Jah Rastafari as expereinced through the taking of his sacremental offering; the holy herb ganja.

crazy, amazing, surprising...
An American writer comes to Jamaica with the idea of writing a book. At first he has to know Jamaica better and we accompany him as he discovers this exotic country. He meets many kinds of people from rastafarians to marrons to relatives of Eroll Flynn (The story with Eroll Flynn... incredible!). What a surprising country, unusual people and so an amazing book! A lesson? The writer will tell you it at the end. Hard to be a rich American!