Read an Excerpt 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 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 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. 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. 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.