Part love story, part murder mystery, set on the cusp of the Second World War, Russell Banks's sharp-witted and deeply engaging new novel raises dangerous questions about class, politics, art, love, and madness—and explores what happens when two powerful personalities, trapped at opposite ends of a social divide, begin to break the rules. Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondack wilderness to the skies above war-torn Spain and Fascist Germany, The Reserve is a clever, incisive, and passionately romantic novel of suspense that adds a new dimension to this acclaimed author's extraordinary repertoire.
“[The Reserve]...holds lessons for our own time. It’s a supremely well-written book...”
“The novel’s strength...is the story Banks has to tell... ‘The Reserve’ captures the drama, not just of these characters’ lives, but of this moment in American history.”
“Banks...displays a vivid immediacy that puts you right in the middle of things.”
“A cool noir thriller...This is new and wonderful turf for this masterful storyteller.”
“A vividly imagined book. It has the romantic atmosphere of those great 1930s tales in film and prose, and it speeds the reader along from its first pages…Banks’ talents are so large - and the novel so fundamentally engaging…THE RESERVE is a pleasure well worth savoring.”
“Like our living literary giants Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets and explosive realities of this country.”
“Banks’s new novel, The Reserve, may well be the best--and darkest--work of fiction written to date about the storied regiou of high peaks, glacial lakes, and vast forests covering an area nearly teh size of Massachusetts.”
“...[Russell Banks] carved out a reputation with words, bu producing some of the best fiction of our time.”
“[A] riveting narrative, featuring an almost pot-boiling love story . . . tantalizing . . . Banks works with a vast palette and a sure stylistic command. The Reserve gratifies page by page.”
“...this powerful and beautiful Russell Banks novel is close to a masterpiece.”
“Russell Banks’s work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time. I trust his portraits of America more than any other.”
“As a love letter to the mountains and greenery and water, [The Reserve] conveys deep feeling.”
“[The Reserve] is beautifully and elegantly written, showing the author as a lover of language....[T]his powerful and beautiful Russell Banks novel is close to a masterpiece.”
“...[A]n almost pot-boiling love story set against a backdrop of global unrest and clearly demarcated class tensions...[it] has character and scene--as well as suspense and surprise--in abundance.”
“Banks peels back [the characters’] gloss so that we can enter their interior.”
“Russell Banks’s work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time... I trust his portraits of America more than any other—the burden of it, the need for it, the hell of it.”
“Banks ranks among our boldest artists.”
“Banks’s willingness to confront… the hard truths about the world we live in… goes a long way toward explaining his longstanding reputation as one of America’s finest contemporary fiction writers.”
“...sexy, almost guilty pleasure of a read...”
“The Reserve is a page-turner from the moment mad beauty Vanessa Cole insinuates herself aboard the biplane of Hemingway-esque antihero Jordan Groves.”
“...Banks has immersed himself in the time he’s writing about and manages to evoke Hemingway without ever aping his style...”
Russell Banks is one of Americas most prestigious fiction writers, a past president 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 prizes and awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida.
Distributor: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: 02-10-2009
Pages: 320
Measurements: 8in X 5.3125in X 0.720721in X 8.16oz
