Affliction

Rating:
Summary: try Ernest Hebert
Review: Affliction is apparently a somewhat autobiographical novel about Wade Whitehouse, a crude & somewhat brutal son of a truly barbarous father. Wade is now in his forties, lives in the Mountains of Central New Hampshire and works as a well driller, snow plower and town constable. His high school sweetheart wife has left him and taken their daughter. Now Wade is reduced to living alone in a wind swept trailer and drinking way too much. Over the course of the novel, this is apparently a common theme for Banks, he realizes how desolate and desperate his life has become and he begins to lash out at his abusive father, shrewish ex-wife, his tyrannical boss and the towns uppity part time residents, the idle rich in their ski chalets. In particular, he becomes obsessed with regaining custody of his daughter and with proving that a seeming hunting accident was actually murder.

These twin compulsions turn out to be a lever with which Wade can pry open his hemmed in life and assert power for once. But the exercise of power and the awakening of self carry dangers which Wade is ill equipped to confront and tragedy lurks around the corner.

I liked this book much better than I expected to; the movie ads seem to promise merely another domestic abuse fiesta, but that story line is really somewhat peripheral. Wade's struggle to gain some control over his life is nearly heroic and we root for him top succeed. But Banks piles on such melodramatics that we anticipate that he is doomed.

There's also another weakness, and a more significant one. The story is narrated by Wade's brother in such an omniscient manner that it becomes distracting. You continually find yourself saying, how does he know that fact or know how that person felt. Also, the tone of his narration is so portentous that we know early on that Wade is headed for disaster; too early.

In the end, I recommend the book, but less whole heartedly than Ernest Hebert's similar cycle of New Hampshire novels.

GRADE: B-

Rating:
Summary: wayyyy cool
Review: dude, this book was rad. it was so funny when the little girl cries because her dad of her dad beat her dad. i liked the ending because the brother talks about people working at video stores and video stores are cool. read this book anyd you will see what im talking about.

Rating:
Summary: Very Engrossing Read!
Review: I couldn't put this book down! There's something about Russell Banks' writing style and the fabulous storyline which made reading this book a truly unique experience. I 'feel' for the character of Wade Whitehouse. I do feel however, that his brother, Rolfe could have 'saved' him, maybe get him to move out of Lawford.. or at least visit him more often or ask Wade to come over to see him.. instead of just spending time listening to Wade's miseries over the phone. Rolfe's a selfish man. He doesn't love his brother the way a (smarter) brother should. He admitted that he liked to study the history of an event or the cause of it... that was why he 'wrote' the book.. not because he felt sad/guilty for what happened to Wade. Anyway, this is a terrific book.. the characters seem very real to me. It feels like there's really a Wade Whitehouse out in this world, right now... a fugitive from law. I'm instantly a Russell Banks' fan, and intend to pick up his other books, Continental Drift and The Sweet Hereafter soon.

Rating:
Summary: Slow start, leave-you-hanging end, but meaty middle!!
Review: I just finished reading this book, mere weeks before the movie version is to be released (The Sweet Hereafter transfered nicely to the big screen, looking forward to Nolte's interpretation of Wade). Therefore, I think it's appropriate to post a review of the book BEFORE I see the movie.

Affliction, especially for Banks fans, is a must read. But a little warning: be patient with the first 5 chapters or so. One could pratically start with the 6th chapter and not miss much more than scenery, a little background and father-daughter tension that is more than reiterated later. That said, the slow-start hurdle was more than worth it, soon finding myself an invisible and helpless spectator to Wade Whitehouse's predicament-laden day to day life in his small northern NH hometown. Though the book covers only a couple of weeks time, you're provided with enough flashbacks (courtesy of Wade's brother Rolfe, the narrarator) and insight to the tension within the pitiful Whitehouse family to feel like you've grown up in Lawford right along with Wade. A toothache, trouble over custody of his daughter, drilling wells and directing school bus traffic as the town "cop" for wages next to nothing, and--along with his father--an unending need for alcohol, all threaten to drive Wade over the edge as he suspects a conspiracy taking place stemming from what he thinks was a murder neatly covered up as a local hunting "accident". It's Wade's ignorant determination to get to the bottom of it all that makes you want to buy him a plane ticket out of Lawford, give him a job and an apartment, and help him start over. But then you remember that it's just a book.

Banks' pacing can be frustrating, and at times the assumptions made by Wade's brother Rolfe the storyteller--from his "investigation" of the incident--seem far too detailed and insightful to be realistic. But his ability to pull you into Wade's world of frustration culminating into violent anger over circumstances he's unable to control makes it all excusable, as well as finding it in your heart to forgive the author for a second-rate ending.

Rating:
Summary: Perfection
Review: One of the finest novels in the last 25 years. The most convincing and natural dialogue I have ever read. Russell Banks is the America's best living novelist, and this is his masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Rugged, tough as nails -- and powerful
Review: Russell Bank's books are always good. This one is top notch: more Post Modern alienation at its best.

Rating:
Summary: A strong look at alcoholism and child abuse
Review: Russell Banks has crafted a strong story about the effects of alcoholism on children. The story follows Wade, a divorced father of a single pre-teen daughter. The mother, however - his high school sweetheart, whom he had married, and divorced, on two separate occasions - has custody and has since moved to another town; Wade only gets to see her once a month, and on Halloween. Wade goes about his life as the local policeman all the while longing for the good old days, and wondering what could have been, and how he can get them back. Eventually, he hatches a scheme, and talks to a lawyer. Slowly, events unfold which shape the future in different ways: a funeral which brings the family together again; the accidental death of a visiting hunter, which Wade thinks is suspicious; a looming marriage which threatens to bring back his old ways; etc. Through everything, the reader is getting a look into Wade's past, the abuse he and his brothers and sister suffered at the hands of their father, and how eerily close Wade seemed to be getting to following in his own father's footsteps.

Affliction is a very strong look at alcoholism and behavioral similarities through generations - the effects which are transmitted from father to son without even realizing it. We do as we have had done to us, not what we wish would have been done to us, or so it seems. The relationship between Wade and his family is clearly defined, and the interactions between them are always revealing, especially when his sister and family comes back for the funeral. The family interaction is some of the best I've read.

There are little trouble points: the novel is long, and several chapters feel unnecessarily slow; the point of view the story is told from (Wade's brother) is awkward at points, especially when he has to explain how he knows things about the story he's telling - it would have been easier just to tell it from a third person point of view; and then ending a little unresolved - I don't know why, but I wanted a little more resolution.

Overall, though, Affliction is still a powerful look at family life and the long-term effects of poor parenting. It's a vicious cycle, but Banks would have us believe there is some hope, as the story is told from the point of view of a brother who continually asks why Wade had to be the failure in the family rather than him. Why had he been able to break the cycle? Why wasn't he in Wade's position, or Wade in his?

The novel offers no clear answers.

Matty J

Rating:
Summary: May I suggest...
Review: that AFFLICTION by Russell Banks may be one of the best 'noir' novels of all time. This has it all. Forget what is supposedly noir fiction. There's no need for any genre conventions in this novel. Wade Whitehouse is both monster and sorrowful lost dog. Darkness. Brutality. The curses of the past. It's all here and all wonderfully painted by one of our best writers.

I am torn between this and CONTINENTAL DRIFT as my favorite Banks books. of course, that could change at any moment. But AFFLICTION and CD both hit me hard between the eyes and In am in Banks' debt for that.

Rating:
Summary: Early, Long, Forever Winter
Review: This is a tough book. It is the last years of a family that has lived in the miseries of violence and addiction. These are always complicated sooner or later by poverty and loss of soul. The very landscape has been beaten up and bought up and drilled to make it little more than a ghost of nature. Twisted and tortuous is the path of the lives and the land. The buildings are erected similarly, no beauty and not much comfort. The people who have the money are not at all nice to the ones who haven't. Corruption, exploitation and every now and then somebody gets brave enough to take off. Wade, our everyman, has a friend who made it, and he wonders after a certain amount of booze, on certain nights, if he might be able to do the same. But he knows he won't. This is a land of trailer parks perched on concrete slabs, where people fight and love in bars, with half working neon signs casting eery shadows over treacherous, icy roads.
Wade Whitehouse is a large man, with strength, sex appeal and a wound racing through him like the Mississippi and all its tributaries. His tale is told through his brother, the questionable survivor, who went to college, got out, has a career, and isn't a blackout drunk. There is the sister turned evangelical Christian, with her own frightening, crazy children. There are the ghosts of the two other brothers, dead together in some offensive in Nam. They too, haunt the bizarre story, a mystery, a murder, and the climax of a legacy.
My friends in Maine were simply out of their minds over Banks, and out of respect from these Chicagoan, Wisconsin transplants whose art awakenings I had shared, I entered into these readings seriously. While I recognize the brilliance, it just isn't my geography, just as I suppose I miss so much in Southern writers, but somehow, I can relate more, I feel, to the Welty's and Faulkners and Flannery O'Connors and so many others.
The symbolism is intense. A mother who is frozen to death and the nagging, break-through pain of a long-decayed tooth. Throbbing, heart breaking and cold.
Check it out, everyone should sample Banks. He is most assuredly, we are told, Wade with a miracle. His talent is indeed miraculous, I just don't worship there.

Rating:
Summary: Stands up there with the best of American Literature
Review: Wade Whitehouse--Quite possibly one of the most tragic and memorable protagonists in 20th century literature. Aside from the early chapter that gives a long-winded historical account of Wade's small town, the novel is flawless in every way. Extremly well-written and rich in dramatic tension, suspense, Multi-dimentional characters and a steadily climaxing plot, Affliction is one of the best American novels to come forth in the late 20th century.