Synopses & Reviews
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.
Twenty-nine-year-old Vanessa Cole is a wild, stunningly beautiful heiress, the adopted only child of a highly regarded New York brain surgeon and his socialite wife. Twice married, Vanessa has been scandalously linked to any number of rich and famous men. But on the night of July 4, 1936, at her parents' country home in a remote Adirondack Mountain enclave known as The Reserve, two events coincide to permanently alter the course of Vanessa's callow life: her father dies suddenly of a heart attack, and a mysteriously seductive local artist, Jordan Groves, blithely lands his Waco biplane in the pristine waters of the forbidden Upper Lake...
Jordan's reputation has preceded him; he is internationally known as much for his exploits and conquests as for his paintings themselves, and, here in the midst of the Great Depression, his leftist loyalties seem suspiciously undercut by his wealth and elite clientele. But for all his worldly swagger, Jordan is as staggered by Vanessa's beauty and charm as she is by his defiant independence. He falls easy prey to her electrifying personality, but it is not long before he discovers that the heiress carries a dark, deeply scarring family secret. Emotionally unstable from the start, and further unhinged by her father's unexpected death, Vanessa begins to spin wildly out of control, manipulating and destroying the lives of all who cross her path.
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.
Review
"The plot gets off to a slow start, but the breathtaking scenic descriptions create a setting central to the story. As the chain of events builds to an inevitable and tragic conclusion, we are left with the feeling that no one, not even the well-to-do, can escape the laws of nature. Recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Banks is one of America's finest novelists, but this oddly distanced work lacks the passionate personal engagement of a masterpiece like Continental Drift (1985) or the bracing historical revisionism of Cloudsplitter (1998)." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Banks' gorgeous, vivid prose feels wasted on mostly limpid characters....This ultimately reads like a fascinating setup for a grand, passionate novel that, sadly, just isn't there." Booklist
Review
"[A] riveting narrative, featuring an almost pot-boiling love story set against a backdrop of global unrest and clearly demarcated class tensions." Los Angeles Times
Review
"[An] illuminating psychological novel of subverted love and family dysfunction, and a powerful commentary on class structure in America." Boston Globe
Review
"Banks fulfills Hemingway's dictum that a good book is one that offers plenty for critics to admire while at the same time provides a story that engrosses ordinary readers." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Review
"This is a deeply moving novel, part mystery, part romance, and part social commentary. Words flow like liquid silk." Providence Journal
Review
"Banks has written a novel in which almost all the constituent aspects are larger than life." New York Times
Review
"For all the care of its construction and clear beauty of its descriptive prose, The Reserve has a curiously cold-blooded and stagy quality, as if it were worked up from its multiple historical sources and abstract themes rather than allowed to grow from the exfoliating revelations of character." Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Review of Books (read the entire New York Review of Books review)
About the Author
Russell Banks is the founding president of Cities of Refuge North America and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He lives in upstate New York and is the New York State Author.