- Paperback: 768 pages
- Publisher: HarperPerennial; 1st HarperPerennial Ed edition (Mar 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060930861
- ISBN-13: 978-0060930868
- Product Dimensions: 20.4 x 13.6 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,336,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
The cover of Russell Banks' mountain-sized novel Cloudsplitter features an actual photo of Owen Brown, the son of John Brown, hero of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". His terrorist band murdered proponents of slavery in Kansas and attacked Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 on what he considered direct orders from God, helping spark the American Civil War.
A heavily researched but fictionalised Owen narrates this remarkably realistic and ambitious novel by the distinguished author ofThe Sweet Hereafter. Owen is an atheist, but he is as dominated by his father, John Brown, as John was haunted by the angry God who demanded human sacrifice to stop the abomination of slavery.
Cloudsplitter takes you along on John Brown's journey-- as period-perfect as that of the Civil War deserter in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain--from Brown's cabin facing the great Adirondack mountain (whose Native American name is "Cloudsplitter"), amid an abolitionist settlement called "Timbuctoo", to the various perilous stops of the Underground Railroad spiriting slaves out of the South, and finally to the killings in Bloody Kansas and the Harpers Ferry revolt. We meet some great names--Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson and a (fictional) lover of Nathaniel Hawthorne--but the vast book keeps a tight focus on the aged Owen's obsessive recollections of his Pa's crusade and the emotional shackles John clamped on his own family.
Banks, a white author, has tackled the topic of race as impressively as Toni Morrison does in earlier novels such as Continental Drift. What makes Cloudsplitter a departure for him is its style and scope. He is noted as an exceptionally thorough chronicler of today's USA in rigorously detailed realist fiction such as David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars) which Banks championed. Banks spent half a decade researching Cloudsplitter, and he renounces the conventional magic of his poetical prose style for a voice steeped in the King James Bible and the stately cadences of 19th-century political rhetoric. The tone is closer to Ken Burns' tragic, elegiac The Civil War than to Bruce Olds' recent crazy-quilt modernist novel about John Brown, Raising Holy Hell.
A fan of Banks' more cut-to-the-chase, Hollywood- hot modern style may get impatient, but such readers can turn to, say, Gore Vidal's reissued Lincoln, which peeks into the Great Emancipator's head with a modern's cynical wit. Banks' narrator is poetical and witty at times: Owen notes, "The outrage felt by whites [over slavery] was mostly spent on stoking their own righteousness and warming themselves before its fire." Yet in the main, Banks writes in the "elaborately plainspoken" manner of the Browns, restricting himself to a sober style dictated by the historical subject.
John Brown's head resembles the stone tablets of Moses. You do not penetrate him, and you cannot declare him mad or sane, good or evil. You read, struggling to locate the words emanating from some strange place between history, heaven and hell. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Time Out
`A splendid epic ... a marvellous book'
--This text refers to an alternate
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Upon waking this cold, gray morning from a troubled sleep, I realized for the hundredth time, but this time with deep conviction, that my words and behavior towards you were disrespectful, and rude and selfish as well. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Upon waking this cold, gray morning from a troubled sleep, I realized for the hundredth time, but this time with deep conviction, that my words and behavior towards you were disrespectful, and rude and selfish as well. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A wonderful novel. As some reviewers have commented, it is indeed a long and often disturbing novel. And I personally found it took a while to get going. It is, however, well worth persevering. Aside from the historical authenticity, the novel is one of the finest I've read about the complex relationships between fathers and sons. Whilst set firmly in the period in which it is set (and which it evokes with great power), it is also very modern in its analysis of a troubled son struggling with an intimidating, deeply repressive (and at times tyrannical) father for whom he has enormous respect and admiration. I do not think it is overstating the case to say that this is a great novel.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've just given this up after 215 of the longest pages I have ever read. Real shame because I am sure John Brown is a very interesting guy but this frankly is dreadful. The son whose words these are, fictionally, is a sad case who had never got over the loss of his mother, had a very confusing relationship with his father, only ever had one sexual experience involving anyone but himself and could cure a speed freak's insomnia in 20 minutes flat.
This is the 4th book by Banks I have started, but the 2nd I haven't finished (The Reserve being the other). Such a shame because The Sweet Hereafter is one of the finest works I've ever read.
Avoid like the plague is my advice - if you're interested in John Brown (and why wouldn't you be?), go and find a factual book about him.
This is the 4th book by Banks I have started, but the 2nd I haven't finished (The Reserve being the other). Such a shame because The Sweet Hereafter is one of the finest works I've ever read.
Avoid like the plague is my advice - if you're interested in John Brown (and why wouldn't you be?), go and find a factual book about him.
Format:Paperback
This book takes you deep into the life of John Brown, with a colorful, suspenseful and, at times, violently realistic tone that makes this 750+ page book read very quickly and remain transported in 1850s America for long after the book is finished. For those who say that this book is "boring", perhaps you could find your way to the Dan Brown thriller section, stopping at the spelling-test checkpoint, and leave serious literature to people who actually enjoy reading...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
An interesting historical fiction book
I had read another book about slavery recently (Sacred Hunger) and was interested in learning more about this issue. Cloudsplitter was a good choice for that. Read more
Published on 23 Jun 2009 by Georgia P.
boring
it was overall an extremly boring book. it started out very slow and was hard to follow. it picked up a little durring the kansas wars, but it was overall a very dull book
Published on 6 Sep 2004
A fine piece of writing
When reading a novel we all have a bias. I'm aware that this is quite a generalisation but in most cases I feel it's reasonably realistic. Read more
Published on 26 Jun 2000 by Simon Jackson
Brings history to vivid life. Essential reading
An utterly gripping and convincing novel, which tells you more about the American civil war than Gone with the Wind and any number of gung-ho 19th-century westerns put together. Read more
Published on 11 Dec 1999 by Tony Barrell
This is a big book in every sense!
This massive novel is a fictionalised account of the life of the radical abolitionist John Brown, as told 50 years after his death, by his son Owen. Read more
Published on 12 Aug 1999
Compelling and convincing
This book is at pains to point out that this is a fictionalisation of this man's life. Nevertheless it paints a convincing portrait of the Brown family and their motivations. Read more
Published on 18 July 1999
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