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The Reserve
 
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The Reserve (Hardcover)

by Russell Banks (Author)
2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
Price: £12.74 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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The Reserve + Cloudsplitter + Rule of the Bone
Price For All Three: £26.20

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  • This item: The Reserve by Russell Banks

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; First Edition, First Printing edition (5 May 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0747593671
  • ISBN-13: 978-0747593676
  • Product Dimensions: 22 x 14.4 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 741,885 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #12 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > B > Banks, Russell

Product Description

Review

'It's the 1930s, and it's war up there - dogfights in the air above Spain, the Hindenburg cruising with its swastikas toward a fiery fate; and down below, in the sublime Adirondack forests surrounding a secluded rustic playground of the very rich, it's a class war of love and madness. Russell Banks puts it all together in The Reserve, a cool noir thriller in which nothing happens as you imagine it will. This is new and wonderful turf for this masterful storyteller' WILLIAM KENNEDY 'This is 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 The Reserve is a pleasure well worth savouring' SCOTT TUROW 'An urgent, passionate, compelling panorama. The writing is thoughtful and disciplined, and the memory of its images continues to disturb me. It deserves to stand beside Conrad and Greene.' Guardian 'If you've never read Russell Banks it's time you acquired the habit.' Elmore Leonard


Product Description

July, 1936. It is the height of the Depression, and the looming threat of Fascism is spreading across Europe. And somewhere high above the Adirondack mountains, beautiful and doomed, floats the vast Hindenburg airship. Vanessa Cole is the stunning debutante daughter of the famous brain surgeon Carter Cole. Notorious for her scandalous affairs with the rich and famous, she has returned to her parents' home in upstate New York after the collapse of her second marriage. Rumours are rife as the family gathers to celebrate the 4th of July at the rustic but elegant Adirondack Camp deep in their privately-owned wilderness, The Reserve. This scene of luxury and privilege is disturbed by the arrival of the internationally famous painter and political radical, Jordan Groves, who brazenly lands his bi-plane on the pristine Second Lake. Groves, celebrated as much for his leftist politics, Hemingwayesque exploits and romantic conquests as for his art, is easy prey for Vanessa Cole's blend of electrifying charm and destructiveness. But in order to protect his two young sons and his marriage, already made fragile by his years of compulsive infidelity, he must try to keep his distance. Especially when it becomes clear that Vanessa carries a deeply scarring family secret. The Reserve explores what happens when powerful personalities from opposite ends of the social spectrum begin to break the rules. Part scandalous love story, part murder mystery, it is a gripping, exhilarating novel from one of America's finest writers.

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The Reserve
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:    (0)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars "She was luminous to him, enveloped by a light that seemed to emanate from inside her, a gleaming halo wrapped around her entire, 20 Mar 2008
By Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Reserve (Hardcover)
Awash with Hollywood sensibility, The Reserve with all of its over-the-top melodrama remains a compelling study of adultery, murder, and sexual and emotional obsession. Possessed of an unashamedly cinematic quality, Banks' novel is peppered with an assortment of colourful characters: the misunderstood artist, the brooding and gruff mountain guide, the beautiful, but half-crazy young heiress, and the wealthy matriarch who holds a long-buried family secret.

In the Tamarack Lake area of the Adirondacks, a place of dark and lonely Nordic thoughtfulness a vast space opens up between lake and forest and mountain and sky when nine people are gathered to celebrate Dr. Cole's 1936 annual Fourth of July Celebration. Here at Rangeview, the largest of only half-dozen rough-hewn log camps, a few of which are elaborately luxurious, Carter and Evelyn Cole wine and dine with their eminently well-connected friends, the men and their wives who have made a great deal of money buying and selling stocks and bonds in the roaring 1920's.

Also in attendance is Vanessa, the Coles' only child. Adopted and at thirty, married and divorced twice, Vanessa has remained childless, "barren," as she puts it. A disconsolate and rather wayward, girl, she's more content to walk by the rocky seashore with a soft wind sifting the tall pines behind her, than join her parents in their patriotic festivities. For months now, Vanessa has been unhappy, perhaps because she's realized that this scene with her parents and their well-to-do friends is just not hers anymore.

This is a world where the mountains and forests and lakes and streams are held for the exclusive use and enjoyment of members and their guests, and is off-limits to strangers and tourists. So Vanessa is surprised when she hears an airplane growing louder in the distance, a seaplane with two large pontoons that touches down on the far side of the lake. When the pilot introduces himself as Gordon Groves, Vanessa immediately recognizes the famous artist.

Known mostly for his graphic work - woodcuts, etchings, prints, Groves has become increasingly known, both in the United States and the Soviet Union for his radical leftist politics. Of course, the attraction between Jordan and Vanessa is instant, and as her cheek nearly brushes him and pulls away, neither of them can deny this electric sexual energy that passes between them, and in typically rebellious fashion, she begs him to take her for a ride in the airplane.

When he lets her fly dangerously close to the mountains, and then leaves her to walk alone back to her family's cabin, the stage is set for a battle of wills. For Jordan proves to be totally enraptured by the heiress and enveloped by a light that seems to emanate from inside her. When an incident at the club Tamarack Club Estates, involving her angers him, he blames her for what she thought she knew about him. Then an unusual request from her charts him on a course, which ends up threatening his marriage to his beloved Alicia.

Banks fills his pages with shame and remorse and broken-down marriages. Jordan ends up finding himself caught in secrets and lies, rumors and gossip, while the author paints a portrait of an egocentric man, blindsided by his own arrogant self-image. In the end all is mired in histrionics and melodrama, kidnapping and imprisonment, with the plot hinging on a fatal accident involving a shot gun and a set of lurid photos - possibly kiddie porn that may or may not exist - and a fire that proves to be the climax to the events of this over-the-top but always entertaining novel. Mike Leonard March 08.
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1.0 out of 5 stars Utter tosh, 15 Aug 2009
By PJ Sturdee (Dunstable) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Reserve (Paperback)
I still can't believe this Mills and Boonesque chick-lit dirge is by the same guy who gave us The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of The Bone. Admittedly I only made it to page 124, though how I got that far is still a mystery to me.

The bit when I realised I was reading the wrong book: "No," he said. "Don't think like that." And he kissed her again, and she closed her eyes and opened herself to him again.

I mean, purlease.

Others might enjoy this book, I think what kept me going as far as I did was the fact there's a half-decent story in there somewhere. Perhaps from page 125 onwards, the story starts to come to life. But I'll never know. Someone please tell me others of his (Cloudsplitter, Continental Drift; I've read The Darling, went on too long, at no point did I care one iota for the main character) are better than this?
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