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158th out of 165 books
—
114 voters
The Sweet Hereafter
Exploring the spectrum of responses felt by the inhabitants of a small Adirondack town in the wake of a tragic school bus accident, "The Sweet Hereafter" is a compelling morality tale that wrestles with the timeless questions of life, responsibility and human hope. Russell Banks has received numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the Literature Award from the Am...more
Paperback, 257 pages
Published
June 26th 1992
by Harper Perennial
(first published September 1st 1991)
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Sep 23, 2012
K.D. Oliveros
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to K.D. by:
501 Must Read Books (Modern Fiction)
When is lying acceptable? Or even an act of heroism? Banks answers: when it is for the common good.
Writing-wise, there is nothing special in this book. The prose is simple, readable and sometimes even boring. There are a few meaningful verses but none that can be gleamed as original or hits you really hard. However, what's lacking in verse is adequately augmented by the thought-provoking questions that this book opens to the reader and in the end, offers answers as well.
When is an accident an ac...more
Writing-wise, there is nothing special in this book. The prose is simple, readable and sometimes even boring. There are a few meaningful verses but none that can be gleamed as original or hits you really hard. However, what's lacking in verse is adequately augmented by the thought-provoking questions that this book opens to the reader and in the end, offers answers as well.
When is an accident an ac...more
This one seemed to have a lot of potential. The idea was good. The story was… good. Or it could have been.
I hated the way it was written. I didn’t like this fellows style at all. None of the characters came off as especially likeable, or real, or endearing, or brave… or anything. There was nothing stand out of the four people in the town chosen to narrate. Their story was sad, something stand out in itself. And perhaps that was meant to be the meat, that was meant to be all that stood out. But...more
I hated the way it was written. I didn’t like this fellows style at all. None of the characters came off as especially likeable, or real, or endearing, or brave… or anything. There was nothing stand out of the four people in the town chosen to narrate. Their story was sad, something stand out in itself. And perhaps that was meant to be the meat, that was meant to be all that stood out. But...more
I first read Russell Banks because I found out that he wrote the books that two great movies are based on, "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Affliction." The first of these two is an exquisite movie.
In fact, and one doesn't often hear this, especially on Goodreads, but the movie is better than the book. In the movie, directed by Atom Egoyan, the story of a school bus in a upstate NY town going into the lake is dealt with in the aftermath. Most of the children of the town are dead, and lawyers show up,...more
In fact, and one doesn't often hear this, especially on Goodreads, but the movie is better than the book. In the movie, directed by Atom Egoyan, the story of a school bus in a upstate NY town going into the lake is dealt with in the aftermath. Most of the children of the town are dead, and lawyers show up,...more
Dec 24, 2007
Joseph
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Fans of the movie, and those who should be fans of the movie (by which I mean everyone)
Whenever I read this book, I find myself wishing I'd read it before seeing the movie. No matter how hard I try, I find that I just can't shake those visuals, and I'd like to try to read the book on its own terms.
Having said that, I love both the book and the movie, for reasons I'm not sure I can explain. The movie was actually one of the first DVDs I ever bought, at a time when DVDs were still kind of magical, and I watched it backwards and forwards. I listened to the commentary tracks; I watche...more
Having said that, I love both the book and the movie, for reasons I'm not sure I can explain. The movie was actually one of the first DVDs I ever bought, at a time when DVDs were still kind of magical, and I watched it backwards and forwards. I listened to the commentary tracks; I watche...more
6 likes · like · see review
I meant to pick up "The Reading Group" for a light change of pace after "Nickel and Dimed," but I had to take Naava to the pediatrician who often discusses literary fiction with me (he reads a lot of the same books I do, but in Hebrew translation) and I was embarrassed to come in with a fluff book. What can I tell you; we all indulge our vanity where we can. Meanwhile, after a 1.5 hour wait in the waiting room I'm too into the book to put it down now. "The Reading Group" will have to wait.
Updat...more
Updat...more
2 likes · like · see review
"Newtown" (which as well as now being synonomous with a horrible tragedy, is also the name of a sleepy, quaint 300 year old New England town a few miles from where I went to high school) got me thinking about this book. I read it many years ago, but it affected me deeply at the time. After I saw the film (which is one of those rare adaptations that may almost eclipse the novel), I read the book and could not stop thinking about either for days. I had the book group I was running at the time read...more
This was a selection for my book discussion group, and I probably would never have read it otherwise. The story unravels from 4 differeent points of view, which is a writing style that I happen to like. Unfortunately all four voices sounded the same to me, as if, if they were talking they would have shared inflection, pauses, and pacing. I suppose that would have been ok, except that the characters are 2 adult males, 1 adult woman, and 1 teen girl, I can't believe they would all speak the same,...more
I watched the movie to this book in college, for my "Problem of Evil" Religion Course (the second best class I have ever taken.) Ever since then it has been on my "to-read" list. I still remember going into Micawber Books in Princeton, after watching the movie, and pulling it off the shelf to consider buying it. The very same style-copy I finally bought, now, 13 years later. Who knows why books come into our heads, but take so long to actually make it into our hands.
The reading of this book was...more
The reading of this book was...more
A remarkable and remarkably simple piece of literature that spawned a remarkable movie.
Russell Banks, Russell Banks, Russell Banks. If I write his name enough it might conjure a complete sentence from my mind, as though his name alone might rub some of his magic off on me and I could explain this novel to you. Russell Banks. It's not working.
I just read Affliction which a truly incredible movie was adapted from, adapted so well that it seemed to make the novel a non-event for me, yet I knew tha...more
Russell Banks, Russell Banks, Russell Banks. If I write his name enough it might conjure a complete sentence from my mind, as though his name alone might rub some of his magic off on me and I could explain this novel to you. Russell Banks. It's not working.
I just read Affliction which a truly incredible movie was adapted from, adapted so well that it seemed to make the novel a non-event for me, yet I knew tha...more
What did you like about the book and what could have been better?
Instead of focusing on one person's perspective, Russell Banks uses four different narrators and their reactions to the horrible bus accident where numerous local children are killed. The four narrators were Dolores Driscoll (the bus driver during the time of the accident), Billy Ansel (a parent of two of the children that died in the accident and was the only witness), Mitchell Stephens (a lawyer that almost succeeded in turning t...more
Instead of focusing on one person's perspective, Russell Banks uses four different narrators and their reactions to the horrible bus accident where numerous local children are killed. The four narrators were Dolores Driscoll (the bus driver during the time of the accident), Billy Ansel (a parent of two of the children that died in the accident and was the only witness), Mitchell Stephens (a lawyer that almost succeeded in turning t...more
A tragic bus accident in a small rural town claims the lives of 14 children and, for all intents and purposes, the lives of those who loved them. I wish I could say the honest voices of Banks' characters, through whom the story is told, were a stretch of the imagination, complete misrepresentations of perfect people, but they weren't. The good-intentioned, muddling Dolores Driscoll; the bitter and ruined Billy Ansel, a Vietnam veteran and father of two of the 14 children killed that awful day; a...more
Although it sounds like a romance novel, this book leaves you with a sore feeling of despair as you experience the anguish, loneliness, anger, and healing of a town that loses most of its children in a horrible bus accident. The author gives us four citizens' first person accounts of, among other struggling emotions, what survivor guilt really feels like.
I was drawn to reading this book after seeing the movie a few years ago. Although the movie was true to the story in action, the motives of the...more
I was drawn to reading this book after seeing the movie a few years ago. Although the movie was true to the story in action, the motives of the...more
Banks's writing is easy to read. His prose is conversational, and any first person narrator he inhabits sounds real. I believe the voices he uses. I believe them as people. Whether I believe the facts of any of the plots in his books is another question, but one that is rich and interesting to ponder.
Still, the two books of his I've read have broken my heart. I'm not running out to the store to buy the rest of his catalog. I'm old and haggard and jaded enough as it is.
The Sweet Hereafter gives u...more
Still, the two books of his I've read have broken my heart. I'm not running out to the store to buy the rest of his catalog. I'm old and haggard and jaded enough as it is.
The Sweet Hereafter gives u...more
The conclusion gives us an incredibly powerful image to end this, an almost impossible tale to tell. The awful tragedy in itself is not committed to the page, but the aftereffects are clear, the emotions are not hinted at but fully told. I don't know if I was very much convinced that there are four DISTINCT characters, since they are so alike. I feel like a great bulk of the book was not told, not actually given to us the way it was supposed to: like evading a grand central question. Yeah, there...more
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Russell Banks brings forth a town struggling to pick up the pieces of their former lives after a fatal school bus accident involving 14 students forces them to deal with the aftermath. The story itself was very satisfying, I loved Stephen Esquire's perspective brought into the whole mix, I didn't enjoy his character as much but I loved reading his court-savvy, sleuthing detective files. Reading the book felt like taking a magnifying glass and focusing a beam of bright summer solar light right in...more
I said 2011 was going to be the year I read Russell Banks. Well, sue me, it's 2012,
I have a lot on my mind. But get to him I did, all right, first with LOST MEMORY OF SKIN
(see under separate heading) and then this small masterpiece of empathy, about the aftermath -- a not so sweet hereafter -- of a school bus's crash on a snowy upstate New York road. "A town that loses its children loses its meaning," he writes, an unusually original and poetic thesis that he dramatizes in several very different...more
I have a lot on my mind. But get to him I did, all right, first with LOST MEMORY OF SKIN
(see under separate heading) and then this small masterpiece of empathy, about the aftermath -- a not so sweet hereafter -- of a school bus's crash on a snowy upstate New York road. "A town that loses its children loses its meaning," he writes, an unusually original and poetic thesis that he dramatizes in several very different...more
Four narrators tell the tragic story of a school bus accident in a small town in upstate New York that kills fourteen children.
This is a book about small towns, about the impossibility for a parent to come to terms w/ the death of a child, about why we desire to place blame when something bad and out of our control happens to those we love. It is a book about the nature of an accident - in the big picture of life, why would 14 children die in a bus crash, why did some survive and others not, why...more
This is a book about small towns, about the impossibility for a parent to come to terms w/ the death of a child, about why we desire to place blame when something bad and out of our control happens to those we love. It is a book about the nature of an accident - in the big picture of life, why would 14 children die in a bus crash, why did some survive and others not, why...more
My mixed reactions to this novel made rating it a challenge. This fairly well-crafted novel is tightly constructed, and written in mostly admirable prose. These are all characteristics that would normally prompt me to give this book a rating above 3 stars. However, the various narrative voices came across as inauthentic to me, and I also disliked the negativity and mean-spiritedness that permeated every pore of this novel, beginning to end. I couldn't help but come away with an impression of the...more
Why is this author so reverred? As an attorney, I was totally turned off, and could no longer suspend my disbelief in this syruppy nonsense of a novel, especially when he got to the lawyer's story which was so unbelievable as to make me angry enough to throw this book against the wall. First, so a bus went over a cliff killing some kids. That's original fodder for a novel? No one else thought that was emotional enough of a subject to write about? And then the lawyer comes and commits all kind of...more
After Banks' Cloudsplitter, which was brilliant, The Sweet Hereafter was a disappointment. The movie was much better. Because Cloudsplitter was so astounding, I'm going to keep check out his other books. But there's something off in this one; the characters don't really ring true - especially the bus driver, who does not seem sufficiently anguished by the accident. Even though it did not seem to be her fault, anyone who is driving when a bus crashes and kills lots of kids... it has to take more...more
This was a perfect bedtime story, which is what I needed at the time I began it. Although very sad, it was beautiful enough (in a very plain, simple way, much like the plainness of the town), intriguing enough, and calm enough to put characters into my head that I could think of rather than thinking of my own life & all the things I have left to do, which helps to lull me to sleep each night. And interesting characters they were, each with their own compelling and very human story. I was par...more
This is the story of a school bus crash in a small town. It's also told from multiple points of view, including the bus driver, the father of a dead child, one of the injured children, and an ambulance-chasing lawyer. Obviously this meant each character had an entirely different spin to put on the story. I really enjoyed this book because it was an interesting concept and was well-written, but my favorite part was the emotional factor. There wasn't really one. In most cases that would be somethi...more
Basically flawless - my only complaints are that it was too short and not NEARLY sad enough.
But I mean, this book is utterly convincing. It switches point of views, but each is so distinct and important that you can't help being happy about it.
I have to say though, the only character who I *really* liked was Nichole. I liked Billy through other people's views but not through his own. I went back and forth on Mitch. But that's the genius of this book, you see. The POVS truly have a function - yo...more
But I mean, this book is utterly convincing. It switches point of views, but each is so distinct and important that you can't help being happy about it.
I have to say though, the only character who I *really* liked was Nichole. I liked Billy through other people's views but not through his own. I went back and forth on Mitch. But that's the genius of this book, you see. The POVS truly have a function - yo...more
Dec 18, 2009
Connie Kuntz
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Those who enjoy philosophy, morality issues, contemplating aftermath
Recommended to Connie by:
Richard Vargas
I'm no expert on the clinical definitions of either depression or sadness, but I have been depressed and, of course, I have been sad. I have never actually thought about the difference between the two until this book and now I think I have some (not much, but some) clarity between the two.
In my experience, depression has hope attached to it. There seems to be beginnings, middles, ends, peaks, valleys, spikes, etc., to it. It can be softened by exercise, good food, literature, art, fresh air, et...more
In my experience, depression has hope attached to it. There seems to be beginnings, middles, ends, peaks, valleys, spikes, etc., to it. It can be softened by exercise, good food, literature, art, fresh air, et...more
Not the best of Banks that I have read so far, but a compelling read nonetheless. He plays with the idea of truth and perspective by having multiple narrators give their opinion as to what really happened the day Sam Dent bus driver, Dolores Driscoll, lost control of her school bus. All but a handful of kids die. Who is to blame? Is blaming anyone fair?
Banks’ writing has the ability to alternate among narrators without losing the forward momentum of the tale.
The only downside to this novel, whi...more
Banks’ writing has the ability to alternate among narrators without losing the forward momentum of the tale.
The only downside to this novel, whi...more
A strangely haunting and affecting book that lingered with me long after the last page. The story of a town in the aftermath of a tragedy that takes most of their children (as did the Piper to Hamlin) seen through the eyes of an outsider, an insurance adjuster in town to assign responsibility for the calamity.
The story felt sweet and true and tragic. Full of that familiar feeling of wanting to hold someone, somewhere accountable for something that God in her infinite wisdom should not have let h...more
The story felt sweet and true and tragic. Full of that familiar feeling of wanting to hold someone, somewhere accountable for something that God in her infinite wisdom should not have let h...more
Voilà un auteur américain à découvrir, tel Cormac McCarthy, dont le style prosaïque pourra être comparé à celui de William Faulkner. La multiplication des points de vue et le ton juste permettent une identification instantanée à chaque personnage, et un événement local bien que gravement accidentel devient alors sous la plume de ce brillant écrivain une formidable fresque de l'Amérique du Nord rurale. On se demande d'abord comment quelqu'un a pu oser adapter une telle oeuvre au cinéma, mais au f...more
A small town in upstate New York deals with the aftermath of a school bus crash in which a number of children die. Each section is narrated by a different character -- the bus driver (who actually gets two sections), the father of one of the children, a lawyer who comes to the town to file a lawsuit on the behalf of anyone he can convince to sign up, and a 14-year-old girl who survived the crash. These different perspectives allow Banks to explore the various reactions, with a particular focus o...more
In 99% of contemporary writter's hands this story would likely have elicited 2-3 stars from me. 4 viewpoints? Normally I'd pinching my nose and hoping it wouldn't smell too bad. But Banks is a master. He segues from one person to the next, purposely, smoothly, and with an emotional intensity that does not waiver. Is it his best book? No. And even then he surpasses expectations.
Banks has an intelligent sense to his writing. His sentences and thoughts are clear. He lets the reader get it, yet he...more
Banks has an intelligent sense to his writing. His sentences and thoughts are clear. He lets the reader get it, yet he...more
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Russell Banks is a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He has written fiction, and more recently, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main works include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplit...more
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“Our obsession with each other was like the isolation that comes with great pain; it was like extreme sadness. Without our children we might have never discovered our differences, which is what has made our abiding love for each other possible.”
—
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“I’ve got nothing against outsiders, per se, you understand. It’s just that you have to love a town before you can live in it right, and you have to live in it before you can love it right. Otherwise, you’re a parasite of sorts.”
—
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Sep 23, 2012 04:18pm