Banks' story collection filled with heartbreakers
---------------------------
"The Angel on the Roof"
by Russell Banks
HarperCollins, $27.50
---------------------------
For literary gravitas, there is no writer better than Russell Banks. The author of 13 previous books, among them the spectacular "Cloudsplitter," "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Affliction" , Banks is known for almost virtuosic empathy for his complex, working-class characters.
Banks' newest book, "The Angel on the Roof," collects 31 of his short stories, culled from more than 30 years of writing. Banks' collection not only echoes the grim, emotionally devastating tone of his novels, but it makes an important contribution to the short-story form as well.
One of Banks' preoccupations in both his novels and stories is people in emotional flux who are trapped by their desires for more conventional or successful lives.
"Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story," one of Banks' most famous stories, begins with Ron, a self-centered wreck, trying to make sense of a ruined affair. "If Sarah were not dead," he says, "you'd think I was cruel, for I must tell you that Sarah was very homely."
In the merciless detail that's common in Banks' stories, Ron describes the rise and fall of his exploitative relationship with poor Sarah Cole, a woman he never truly understands.
However, most of the damage in Banks' stories is the work of blood family. "The Burden," "Defensemen," "The Lie" - these are all heart-breaking stories of parents and children in "The Angel on the Roof." But the best among them are "Quality Time" and "Queen for a Day."
In "Quality Time," Kent's visiting daughter, Rose, enrages her father through her willful disregard for what he considers proper. When Kent sees Rose almost struck by a car, her explanation for her carelessness reveals her resemblance to his ex-wife, and his perceptions of both mother and daughter:
"He sees that he's been a man completely opposed to the man he thought he was," Kent thinks. "He knows nothing of his daughter's needs, because he knew nothing of her mother's."
Earl is the older of Adele's two sons in "Queen for a Day." Abandoned by their father, they live hand-to-mouth in a small New Hampshire town. Earl works tirelessly to shore up his mother's wobbly independence. Until the wrenching conclusion of this story, in which Earl effects a small but momentous change in his family, Earl's father is eerily present, "agreeing to send money, and then sending nothing . . . leaving them with not even a forwarding address, forbidding them, almost, from adjusting to a new life . . . in which the man who is their father . . . does not betray them anymore."
"The Fisherman" is a masterpiece of a novella from a series of Banks' stories about mobile-home residents. Title character Merle Ring, a cantankerous, retired laborer, lives for winter, when he can ice fish on the trailer park's frozen lake. With subtle craftsmanship, Banks connects Merle's outsider status in the community to his love of the ice house he sits in for months at a time.
In "Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat," Banks shows what happens when the young white daughter of a trailer-park resident takes a summer boat ride with the park's young black handyman. On the way to a revealing ending, the woman and man drift from topic to topic, discussing the state of their love affair, addressing the casual bigotry of the woman's family.
"Rowboat" is one of Banks' earlier efforts, but uniting all of his somber work in this collection is one rather tender idea.
"One of the most difficult things to say to another person," Russell Banks writes in the introduction to this collection, "is, I hope that you will love me for no good reason." We tell stories, Banks believes, in order to express this idea. That sentiment, combined with Banks' astonishing talents, produce a monumental body of work.