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A Permanent Member of the Family, by Russell Banks
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Suffused with Russell Banks’s trademark lyricism and reckless humor, the twelve stories in A Permanent Member of the Family examine the myriad ways we try—and sometimes fail—to connect with one another, as we seek a home in the world.
In the title story, a father looks back on the legend of the cherished family dog whose divided loyalties mirrored the fragmenting of his marriage. “A Former Marine” asks, to chilling effect, if one can ever stop being a parent. And in the haunting, evocative “Veronica,” a mysterious woman searching for her daughter may not be who she claims she is.
Moving between the stark beauty of winter in upstate New York and the seductive heat of Florida, Banks’s acute and penetrating collection demonstrates the range and virtuosity of both his narrative prowess and his startlingly panoramic vision of modern American life.
- Sales Rank: #289423 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-11-12
- Released on: 2013-11-12
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
While well-known for his impressive novelistic output, Banks (Continental Drift) is also a prolific short story writer. This collection, his sixth, is made up of four never-before-published stories. The first, Former Marine, sets the exhausted, elegiac tone for the book. It features Connie, an aging ex-Marine who refers to himself as the Retiree, even though he was laid off: It's the economy's fault. And the fault of whoever the hell's in charge of it. Connie robs banks, badly, to make ends meet, but they (inevitably) don't. In the fine story Transplant, Howard Blume is recovering from a heart transplant when the deceased donor's wife asks to meet him, to listen (with a stethoscope!) to Blume's new heart. In the most subversive story of the collection, Snowbirds, a man dies of a heart attack in Florida, where he and his wife are spending the winter. Isabel, his widow, is nonplussed; in fact, she appears somewhat delighted at the prospect of a new life in the sun. While these exquisitely crafted stories are highly personal, they are also permeated by a sense of sadness about the death of the American dream, as the country struggles, out of work and seemingly out of hope. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Nov.)
From Booklist
After his darkly magnificent and compassionate novel, Lost Memory of Skin (2011), a Carnegie Medal finalist, Banks brings out his first story collection since The Angel on the Roof (2000). In a dozen woodcut tales—firmly incised, deeply grained—Banks distills the lives of people of unfailing grit enduring reduced or radically altered circumstances. “Former Marine” portrays a tough 70-year-old who has figured out a way to stay solvent that is guaranteed to freak out his three sons, each in law enforcement. Banks measures the geometry of family in the title story, a look back at a divorce and the fate of a beloved dog. The harsh grandeur of the Adirondacks provides the template for many of these flinty, funny, devastating stories. But Banks also takes us to molten Miami in masterfully intensifying tales. In “Snow Birds,” a new widow embraces scandalous liberation, while in the wrenching “Blue,” a thrifty and determined 47-year-old grandmother finds herself trapped in a ludicrous earthly hell, condemned by the dangerous conflation of life and television, dream and reality. A resounding collection by an essential American writer. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Every book by Banks is a must-read and consequently receives headliner publicity and A-list media attention. --Donna Seaman
Review
Of the many writers working in the great tradition today, one of the best is Russell Banks -- Jonathan Franzen Banks is one of those precious writers like Twain or Salinger who creates a voice so wonderfully real that the experience of reading them is like a conversation with an old friend Sunday Times If you've never read Russell Banks it's time you acquired the habit -- Elmore Leonard 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. -- Michael Ondaatje A living master at the height of his powers. -- Jennifer Haigh . Praise for The Lost Memory of Skin: Electrifying Sunday Times Destined to be a canonical novel of its time ... it delivers another of Banks's wrenching, panoramic visions of American moral life, and this one very particular to the early 21st century ... Banks, whose great works resonate with such heart and soul, brings his full narrative powers to bear. -- Janet Maslin New York Times Banks's enormous gamble in both plot and character pays off handsomely ... By the end, Kafka is rubbing elbows with Robert Ludlum, and Banks has mounted a thrilling defense of the novel's place in contemporary culture. New Yorker Russell Banks tackles hard subjects with verve and courage -- Margaret Atwood 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. -- Cornel West His boldest imaginative leap yet into the invisible margins of society ... Lost Memory of Skin is a haunting book. Wall Street Journal Among contemporary writers giving voice to America's beleaguered working class, Russell Banks may have no peer ... [a] beautifully crafted novel San Francisco Chronicle Russell Banks really does know how to pull his readers into a dark, dark world only to deliver us into the light. Boston Globe Lost Memory of Skin should be required reading for anyone interested in fixing the country's broken criminal justice system ... Banks, in his latest novel, takes an unflinching look at people at their worst and manages to turn it into art. Associated Press Banks is a master of peeling back the veneer to show us for the desperate creatures we are, no more so than in his fearless Lost Memory of Skin...[Banks] writes here with a combination of compassion and outrage ... a compelling read and an indictment of our age. Miami Herald A compelling story ... one of those rare, strange, category-defying fictions that grabs hold of you ... It's hard to shake it off. And even when you do, it leaves a mark. Chicago Tribune One of America's greatest writers Esquire Banks remains a master. -- Nicholas Barber Sunday Express This is a collection to shout about. It is one of the best books published this year... Exactly how good a writer is Russell Banks? How about wonderful? -- Eileen Battersby Irish Times It's hard to resist the power of such clear and bracingly honest writing. -- Simon Ewing The List Each story has the ripe, full-blooded power of a vintage William Trevor tale...A short story collection that ranks highly among the books we have read this year - and a short story collection that might well be the short story collection of 2013 -- Peter Wild Bookmunch.wordpress.com Russell takes all his characters and his stories in such unexpected directions that we start to see loss in a different way. -- Christena Appleyard Daily Mail Banks is excellent at imbuing short sentences with real heft, and there's an emotional weight that pervades the collection. Sunday Business Post These stories show us an America we don't see as often as we should: down on its luck, but sympathetic and dignified. -- Joanna Biggs Sunday Times
Most helpful customer reviews
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
One of the Best Short Story Collections I Have Read This Year
By Fairbanks Reader - Bonnie Brody
I have long been an admirer of Russell Banks' work. This collection of short stories is excellent and many of them kept me riveted for the duration. The collection consists of twelve stories, most of them about the families we have and the families we make. Others are about the figments of truth that make up our experiences while we decide what is worth believing and what is not. The stories take place in different geographic settings from Florida to upstate New York to Portland, Oregon.
There are a few that are my favorites and will stay with me for a long while. One of the ones I loved was 'Former Marine'. Connie is a former Marine who raised his three sons by himself after his wife deserted the family. He is now without work. "Let go. Like he was a helium-filled balloon on a string, he tells people." What he always wanted was to be able to take care of himself and his family "because you're never an ex-father, any more than you're an ex-Marine." Desperate times require desperate measures.
In 'Permanent Family', a family dog holds the memory of permanence and stability intact after a divorce. She was "the last remaining link to our pre-separation...to a time of relative innocence, when all of us, but especially the girls, still believed in the permanence of our family unit, our pack."
'Big Dog' is about Erik's winning a MacArthur genius award for his giant art installations of kitchens and bathrooms. He is told not to tell anyone about the award until it is formally announced. However, at a dinner party that night with close friends, he spills the news. What occurs is far from what he expected.
'Blue' is my favorite story in the collection. Ventana Robertson has saved up $3,500 to buy a used car. She arrives at the car lot at 6 p.m. They close at 6:30. Forgetting Ventana is still in the lot, the salesmen lock up the fenced yard. Ventana finds herself locked in with a vicious pit bull on her scent. She scrambles on top of a car to get away from him. What happens that night is heart-stopping.
I also loved 'Searching for Veronica', a story that takes place in a bar in the Portland Airport. Russell sits down in the airport bar and Dorothy, a woman he doesn't know, proceeds to tell him the story of Veronica, a drug-addicted young woman who once lived with her and her daughter Helene many years ago. Dorothy had to kick Veronica out because of her drug use and now thinks that she is dead. Consequently, she visits the morgue every time an unidentified female body shows up. Is the story true or is it something that's been manufactured by an addled mind?
Several of the stories deal with the obtuse meanings of truth and what exactly is happening. There are narratives that come out of addiction, some that are about starting a new life, and others that result from finding oneself a witness to a horrific deed. All of these push the meaning of truth to the limit. Additionally, there is almost always a picture of family, of one sort or another, that governs these tales.
Banks has a wonderful way with words and the stories, which can be dark, are often balanced with humor or questioning. I found this book one of the best short story collections I have read this year. I highly recommend it.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Gritty and precisely observed tales
By Bookreporter
The author of bleak and brutal novels like CONTINENTAL DRIFT, AFFLICTION and, his most recent, LOST MEMORY OF SKIN, set among the homeless of Miami, Russell Banks is not someone to turn to if you are in search of lighthearted or uplifting fiction. Banks has devoted most of his productive, if too little appreciated, career to chilly tales portraying characters on the margins of society, in jeopardy of losing their tenuous grasp on something even approaching normal life. That’s certainly true of most of those who populate the 12 stories (six of them never before published) of his sixth collection, A PERMANENT MEMBER OF THE FAMILY.
“Former Marine,” the story that opens the book, is representative of Banks’s sensibility. The protagonist, Connie, who refers to himself as “the Retiree,” even though he’s “never officially retired from anything,” has lost his job at a Plattsburgh, New York auction house and now finds himself eking out a meager existence. His decision, explicable if not excusable, to turn to crime takes on a certain irony when we learn that his three sons all work in law enforcement.
The male characters in other stories find themselves in similarly untenable situations. In the title story, 35 years after the “family legend” it recounts, the narrator, a college professor teaching literature in a typical Banks setting, a “shabbily quaint village in southern New Hampshire,” describes the “joint custody” arrangement involving the family dog and its tragic ending, as he tries to “reclaim the story, to take it back and make it mine again.” “Christmas Party” revolves around the decision of Harold Bilodeau, an excavator, to leave his double-wide trailer to attend the party his ex-wife is throwing at the beautiful home her contractor husband has built for her. Sheila, Harold’s ex, is “the past that wouldn’t top bleeding into his present, and as far as he could see, his future too.” And “Transplant” is the moving story of Howard, a divorced man and heart transplant recipient who agrees to meet the widow of the man whose heart has given him life. The concluding scene of the story is overpowering in its emotional impact.
Even when Banks moves south, to Florida, his stories don’t get any brighter. That’s true of “Snowbirds,” one of the strongest in the book. Shortly after she and her husband move to the Biscayne Bay condo they’ve rented for five months, Isabel Pelham loses him to a heart attack. Her friend, Jane, leaves her home in snowy upstate New York to comfort what she assumes will be her grieving friend on the abrupt ending of her 37-year marriage. Instead, she finds “something weird going on with Isabel” and realizes she was “not prepared for her friend’s sprightliness or her suddenly fortified willfulness and new enthusiasms,” causing her to question the foundation of her own long-time marriage.
“Blue” is another of the several stories set in Miami. In it, Ventana Robertson finds herself trapped by a vicious guard dog after hours in the used car lot where she’s gone with $3,000 cash to buy her first car. Attempting to evade the beast until she can summon help, she becomes a “frightened middle-aged woman atop a silver SUV.” The story features a sendup of the sometimes idiotic quality of local news and a truly startling ending. “The Green Door,” the final story, is an especially dark one, even by Banks’s standards. It’s narrated by a bartender, describing the fate of a man “franchising prayer and meditation centers at Indian casinos all across the country.” As the bartender wryly observes, “this is America, and we’ve got a genius for marketing.”
The only story that feels out of place in this collection is “Big Dog,” a portrait of ego and envy. Erik Mann, a sculptor of “elaborate installations the size of suburban living rooms” receives a MacArthur “genius” grant that will pay him half a million dollars tax-free over five years. His decision to reveal the news of the award prematurely sparks a dinner party row of the sort that’s probably forgotten in the sober light of morning.
For most of the characters who populate it, the world of Russell Banks is a place of lost jobs, lost chances and, above all, lost love. It’s a difficult and unforgiving world, one where we wouldn’t want to live, and yet we’re fortunate to have him take us to visit it in these gritty and precisely observed tales.
- Harvey Freedenberg
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Intuitive and Complex...Without The Fireworks
By Jill I. Shtulman
Russell Banks’ short stories don’t rely on fireworks and bells and whistles; there’s no hint of post-modernism or genre bending in them. They’re deceptively simple and straightforward…even dispassionate in tone. Yet in many ways, they are morally complex; certainly, they pack a wallop.
Most of them focus on men of a certain age – time-tested, time-broken men who have struggled through broken dreams and damaged relationships.
In the eponymous story – the story of a post-divorce family – the aging dog is the last tenuous link to the two families. “None of us knew that she was helping us postpone our anger and need for blame – blame for the separation and divorce, or the destruction of the family unit, for our lost innocence.”
In Christmas Party, a cuckolded husband attends the holiday party of his ex-wife and her new husband and discovers that their veneer of amiability is strained during the time of good cheer. The story Snowbirds begins with the death of Isabel’s spouse George; her good friend Jane flies down to Florida to comfort her. Yet Isabel is in scant need of comforting and the focus shifts to Jane herself. “It made Jane believe for a moment that she could be fearless, as fearless as Isabel, that she could be reborn as someone else, as someone unformed, and that, like Isabel, she could become an adolescent girl again.”
Lost and Found is a beautifully-crafted story about a middle aged man, lonely in his marriage, who teetered on the brink of infidelity and “didn’t want to remember what I lost that night. And what I found.” The satiric story Blue – set in a used-car lot – is different type of story with shades of Stephen King. And the final story, Green Door, is a more complex tale about postponing desires, cultivating fantasies, and ultimately realizing that what we want isn’t necessarily what we get.
A Permanent Member of the Family is proof positive that short stories can shine through sharp insights, provocative themes, and a laser focus on alienated individuals yearning for understanding and connection. It’s another triumph for Russell Banks. 4.5.
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