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American Spirits has a beautiful, elegiac sense; we feel the passing of time and the fading away of things, possibly even of the American experiment. But they’re also about rebirth; what looks like decline is only decline when seen through the limited lens of one human life. Banks’ view, in this, his last book, is vast, deeply in touch with the long arc of history. He accomplishes all of this in the classic way, by looking with interest and affection and acceptance at individuals, whom the writer has summoned out of the air and come to love.
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I learned so much about storytelling and about our country reading these stories, and I finished the book full of gratitude that such a man, and a writer, as Russell Banks could have existed. We’ll miss him and, I expect, won’t see his like again.
— George Saunders, author of Liberation Day
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What a beautiful farewell gift the great Russell Banks has left us in American Spirits. Better than anything I’ve read, this book gave me hope about our current political situation—it gave me a way to think of it that isn’t all despair. These three utterly compelling stories are so truthful about America as to be almost unbearable. They’re funny, frank, full of love and each of them delivers an epic punch, in its own flavor—they feel Shakespearean in their daring—in how fearlessly they exploit the dramatic space they’ve mapped out. (Several times while reading I found myself thinking: ‘My God, he’s going there.’)
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“American Spirits has a beautiful, elegiac sense; we feel the passing of time and the fading away of things, possibly even of the American experiment. But they’re also about rebirth; what looks like decline is only decline when seen through the limited lens of one human life. Banks’ view, in this, his last book, is vast, deeply in touch with the long arc of history. He accomplishes all of this in the classic way, by looking with interest and affection and acceptance at individuals, whom the writer has summoned out of the air and come to love.
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I learned so much about storytelling and about our country reading these stories, and I finished the book full of gratitude that such a man, and a writer, as Russell Banks could have existed. We’ll miss him and, I expect, won’t see his like again.
— George Saunders, author of Liberation Day
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“Elegant . . . As ever, the reader senses the confidence in Banks’s narrative voice. This is a welcome addition to the legacy of a master storyteller.
— Publishers Weekly
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“Compelling narratives from this fine writer . . . All these stories include ruminations on the passage of time, changes and damage in the landscape, and the values and aspirations sustained from generation to generation. The tone in these passages is almost elegiac: hymns to a past when fewer wounds were self-inflicted.
— Kirkus, starred
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Elegant . . . As ever, the reader senses the confidence in Banks’s narrative voice. This is a welcome addition to the legacy of a master storyteller.
— Publishers Weekly
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Elegant . . . As ever, the reader senses the confidence in Banks’s narrative voice. This is a welcome addition to the legacy of a master storyteller.
— Publishers Weekly
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“Russell Banks has always been a master at elevating the small calamities of everyday American life into full-blown tragedy, revealing all the dark ways our grief and despair can spill into something larger, more menacing, than we ever imagined. With American Spirits, Banks takes us to upstate New York with three connected stories of small-town life gone very wrong.
— Lit Hub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2024”
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Banks’s stories are about fragile, everyday people whom, despite their resilience and strength, life still manages to break. An imaginatively constructed [book of linked tales] from a late master storyteller.
— Library Journal, starred review
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Elegant . . . As ever, the reader senses the confidence in Banks’s narrative voice. This is a welcome addition to the legacy of a master storyteller.
— Publishers Weekly“The late Banks was our chief chronicler of the working class, the patron saint of the blue collar . . . Each tale [in American Spirits] bears the unmistakable imprint of a true literary giant, who will be dearly missed.
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Russell Banks has always been a master at elevating the small calamities of everyday American life into full-blown tragedy, revealing all the dark ways our grief and despair can spill into something larger, more menacing, than we ever imagined. With American Spirits, Banks takes us to upstate New York with three connected stories of small-town life gone very wrong.
— Lit Hub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2024”