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Loss seems to be the way of life in the American Northeast, far above the metropolitan
areas of the urban sprawls that make up most of the coastline. Loss is prevalent, as is
alcoholism, depression, poverty, and a certain sense that the American dream is not
possible in its most simplistic form.
Russell Banks's stories, in the compact lives through which he threads his favorite
themes, are alive. They breathe, a nasty beer-laden, smoke-filled breath in your face.
They yell at you as if they need hearing aids. They sneak in front of you in line at the
supermarket and then never have enough money to pay for their cartloads. Every story is
alive, even the ones in which no one is doing much of anything but dying. THE ANGEL ON THE
ROOF brings together the author's own handpicked collection of stories from the last 40
years of his career, some new, most of them old, all of them haunting, cold, desolate.
Banks doesn't know from happiness --- there isn't a lot of shared laughter and wonder in
his stories. Take "The Child Screams and Looks Back at You." Nice title, first
of all --- it's strange, makes you think. Then a horrible idea eventually takes shape:
"...there is only blood emptying out of his body; and you cannot staunch its flow,
but must stand there and watch your child's miraculous, mysterious life disappear before
you. For that is they key that unlocks these awful visions --- your child's being simply
alive is both miracle and mystery; and therefore it seems both natural and understandable
that he should be dead." Yikes! This is a writer who is quite serious about the most
awful moments of life, the most low-down, dirty, shameful, horrific and depressing moments
--- what do you do after you've been fired; let's go down memory lane as a mother is
forced to watch her son die from what she thought was the flu; a girlfriend a man is
ashamed to be seen with dies, and he thinks about her spirit and how he treated her.
There are so many afterthoughts here --- it's as if Banks is a reporter of only that which
has happened and not that which is about to happen or could happen. He is around every sad
and fearful corner, listening in on private heartbreak at tables and counters all around
upstate New York, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, states where the winters reign at
their bleakest. THE ANGEL ON THE ROOF brings these stories together in such a right order
that you feel as if you are reading WINESBURG, OHIO all over again, visiting the wretched
masses of some small town, hearing their most desperate pleas, their most painful moments
revisited.
His attention to detail notwithstanding, it is the compassion and empathy with which he
expressly hands out the knowledge he has of his characters' inner lives, their passions
and sorrows, that make the stories so compelling. Even when he gets political, venturing
to Africa and other faraway lands, the issues of race and gender and love that wash over
every story's hard-packed shore can wrack your heart with sadness. Russell Banks is a fine
novelist, a decent screenwriter, but an altogether skilled and disturbing short story
writer. This is far beyond happy summer beach reading --- this is serious, serious
business. Encounter THE ANGEL ON THE ROOF at your own risk.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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