<![CDATA[The Darling: A Novel]]>

false <![CDATA[The Darling: A Novel]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167856526m/26920.jpg 26920 19 Russell Banks brings to life in The Darling another political-historical narrative of great scope and range. As in Continental Drift and Rule of the Bone, racial issues are explored; as in Cloudsplitter, idealism runs off the rails. Banks always makes it work because he keeps it real. The "darling" of the story is Dawn Carrington, neé Hannah Musgrave, a political radical and member of the Weather Underground forced to flee America to avoid arrest. At the time of the novel, she is 59, living on her working farm in upstate New York with four younger women, recalling her life in Liberia and her recent return to that country to look for her sons. "Mainly, we return to a place in order to learn why we left," she says. For Hannah, the decision was harrowing. She abandoned her sons during a bloody civil war, after the death of her husband, Woodrow Sundiata, a black African Cabinet Minister in President Samuel Doe's government, who is beheaded in front of her and her three boys. Banks explores mercilessly the corruption, greed, sloth, cynicism, and violence running through the Liberian leaders from Tolbert to Doe to Charles Taylor, weaving the real story of the horrors of West Africa with the fictional narrative of Hannah and Woodrow. He can take history off the page, bringing to life the times, people and events he recounts. Hannah was born a child of privilege and chafed against it from her youth: "...it was an old impulse ... this desire to separate myself in the dance of life from the people who had brought me and become one instead with the people excluded from the dance..." Her father is a famous pediatrician, her mother a shadow figure maintaining a predictably correct suburban household. Both parents are liberal, but Hannah outstrips their political stance early on. They are estranged for many years because of her flight, but the separation is really much deeper than distance or politics. She becomes a wife and mother, and is bored and unfulfilled by the role. She turns to creating a sanctuary for chimpanzees and finds her real purpose. "An old pattern. It's how since childhood I have made my daily life worth living, by turning tedium and despair into a cause." She names each chimp, calls them her "dreamers," and cares for them while others care for her children. Self-knowledge is not high on a list of her personal attributes. Although she characterizes herself as "a darling," there is little evidence to support her claim: distant father, cold mother, controlling husband. She finally sees herself in a true light: "Here it all was again: the names and dates, the tired facts of my biography up to then, the description of my few skills and talents. It was the CV of a small-time, would-be domestic terrorist. Sad. Pathetic." Hannah Musgrave is a visitor in her own life, never really connecting with anyone; more a dreamer than a darling. Russell Banks has, once again in The Darling, shown himself to be one of the finest novelists writing today. He has written very convincingly, in a woman's voice, a story of youthful idealism destroyed by the real world, of a woman who connected more completely with chimps than with humans, and who says, "once it was clear to me that I would have to abandon my husband and children and return alone to the United States, once I saw that I would be alone, safe from prosecution--I realized, gradually at first and then in a rush, that it was exactly what I had wanted all along I was once again seizing an opportunity to abandon one life for another." Another reinvention for Hannah. --Valerie Ryan 2598507 2004 The Darling: A Novel total:570|5:125|4:240|3:145|2:44|1:16| 570 2124 795 104 5 2 false false Wed Jul 11 19:13:44 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 07 19:04:20 -0700 2007 1 1 false false Mon Apr 30 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 11 10:00:02 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 11 10:00:22 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Oct 08 18:03:46 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 08 18:17:13 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Nov 05 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Wed Aug 05 09:54:37 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 05 09:55:24 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jun 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 06 13:34:45 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 15 08:05:35 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 3 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Thu Aug 30 17:52:43 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 30 17:55:26 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Tue Jul 17 07:00:20 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 17 07:00:20 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Dec 19 21:05:57 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 30 12:32:29 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 19 21:05:57 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Wed Sep 05 09:05:40 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 05 09:05:40 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Sat May 23 11:28:36 -0700 2009 Sat May 23 11:35:22 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Nov 27 10:33:43 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 27 10:41:23 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Sun Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 02 21:57:53 -0700 2009 Thu Nov 19 23:37:28 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 10 12:28:12 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 22:20:13 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Jun 25 10:34:02 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 25 10:46:13 -0700 2008
As I read this book, I wanted to grab Hannah/Dawn and smack her face. What a despicable character....and what a writing genius Banks is, at least in this book, to make me feel this way.

However, I like linear novels, so Banks' jumping back...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Mar 01 17:42:20 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 01 18:12:44 -0800 2008
"The Darling" is another beautifully written, gripping (in a small way) gem from a true craftsman. I certainly wouldn't place it among Banks' very best ("Cloudsplitter" is clea...more...]]> 2 0 false false Sat Feb 07 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 12 08:52:15 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 07 06:10:10 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Dec 29 19:29:22 -0800 2007 Wed Apr 01 16:56:10 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Wed Oct 24 10:48:32 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 24 10:48:55 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 21 19:19:56 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 31 16:56:15 -0700 2007
1) The Orientalist nature that the narrator looks at Africa. It is so outside of her and her experience, even when she lives there for a quarter century. We can never empathize with any African character, because all of them are seen as ...more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Apr 10 19:51:07 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 10 20:08:22 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=26920