Synopsis
A gentle man, the victim of a violent father, is made violent himself by a fellow cop whom he suspects of murdering a local labor official, and an ex-wife who limits contact with their daughter
Reviews
In this masterful novel Banks ( Continental Drift ) returns to the decaying region of Catamount, N.H. Harrowed by snow and bone-freezing cold for the several days of the novel's duration, Lawford is an old mill town, the home of protagonist Wade Whitehouse, 41. Divorced, inept, confused, stubborn, Wade lives in a rusting trailer and works with doglike fidelity at small jobs as the town's cop, well-digger, and snowplow driver. He has abused his family, after being brutalized as a boy by his drunken father, abuse that continues even now. Yet Wade, afflicted with a nostalgic, "romantic" streak, wants to rebuild the trust of his ungiving daughter Jill, 10, who tersely judges him through the tiger mask of her Halloween costume (part of the novel's theme of tragic drama). Wade's dream--of making a home for Jill and "Pop," and marrying the goodhearted waitress Margie--slowly erodes. His obsession that a hunting accident is really a murder drives him to violent deeds that may try credibility unless the reader sees the end, like the beginning, in tribal, near-mythic terms. Deerhunters' gunshots punctuate the action; guns and vehicles dominate as conspicious symbols of contradictory male needs to bond and to kill. Wade's fateful story is narrated compellingly by his brother Rolfe, a history teacher who bases his quest for truth on memory, testimony and intuition. 25,000 first printing; $25,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"Why Wade and not me?" wonders Wade's brother Rolfe. Why is Wade "lonely, poor, depressed, alcoholic and violent"? In an attempt to understand, Rolfe reconstructs the last few weeks of Wade's life in Lawford, New Hampshire--weeks in which Wade buries his mother, loses his job and fiancee, and murders his father. Banks suggests that violence is both cause and effect, that Wade repays the world with the same blows he received as a child. While this is scarcely an original explanation, Banks turns it into vivid and troubling fiction. Like Continental Drift ( LJ 4/15/85), this new novel has its awkward moments, but the prevalence of violence in our culture is more awkward still. For collections of contemporary literature.
- Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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