Outer Banks: Three Early Novels

by Russell Banks

An Omnibus Edition of Three Classic Early Novels from the Critically Acclaimed Author of Cloudsplitter and Affliction

Family Life: Russell Banks's first novel is an adult fairy tale of a royal family in a mythical contemporary kingdom where the myriad dramas of domesticity blend with an outrageous slew of murders, mayhem, coups, debauches, world tours, and love in all guises, transcendent or otherwise.

Hamilton Stark: This tale of a solitary, boorish, misanthropic New Hampshire pipe fitter—the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother—is at once a compelling meditation on identity and a thoroughly engaging story of life on the cold edge of New England.

The Relation of My Imprisonment: Utilizing a form invented by imprisoned seventeenth-century Puritan divines—an utterly sincere and detailed, if highly artificial, recounting of great suffering—Banks's novel is a remarkably inventive, lovingly good-humored argument, exploration, and map of the caged religious mind.

Genres: Fiction

560 pages, Paperback

First published June 24, 2008

About the author

Russell Banks was a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He has written fiction, and more recently, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main works include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction. The latter two novels were each made into feature films in 1997.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 for Hamilton Stark. 2 for the others

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

(no 28 of 2019)

Enjoyed "Family Life." "Hamilton Stark" was tough sledding. Gave up during "The Relation of My Imprisonment."

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am generally a fan of Russel Banks: "The Sweet Hereafter" is one of the most devestatingly beautiful New England novels of the last 25 years if you ask me, and I have read few collections of short stories as cohesive and compelling as "Trailerpark." "Outerbanks" collects Banks's three first novels, so to be fair I should mention that the three-star review is sort of an average.
The first novel in the collection, "Family Life," I would probably rate at two and a half stars. It's a sort of Medieval court tale set in the contemporary world. The cast of characters are a king and queen, their three sons the princes, the Green Man (who lusts after the princes), and the Loon (who is the King's philosopher-cum-fuckbuddy). It does a good job of lampooning bourgois domestic values and contemporary social mores, but it was a little high-concept/low-substance for me. Entertaining and a funny read, but a bit slight.
The third novel "The Relation of My Imprisonment," I would give three stars. A first-person narrative related from a prison-cell, it is also a story that evinces a large preoccupation with European social history. The protagonist has been condemned to life in prison for admitting to his profession as a coffin maker and practice of a religion that is a sort of cult of the dead which has just been outlawed. The exploration of religious persecution, though somewhat obvious, is thoughtful and thought provoking. And Bank's ability to immerse himself in the language and style of the 17th century is admirable, though at times a bit contrived.
The second novel, "Hamilton Stark," was far and away my favorite, though, and I would give it four and a half stars. It is narrated by an author who has decided to write a novel about one of his best friends, a misanthropic near-recluse who is notorious in his small New Hampshire town for such feats as nearly bludgeoning his father to death with a frying pan and turning his mother out of her own house after he usurps it from her. The author renames his friend Hamilton Stark and as he undertakes to get at the crux of what makes his friend (and Hamilton) such a compelling character he falls in love with "Hamilton's" estranged daughter, who is equally obsessed by the man and his flaws and is also attempting to write a novel about him. The book quickly becomes a novel about Hamilton Stark, a novel about the narrator, a novel about the daughter, and a novel about the author all at once. The way it plays with subject-hood, identity, and the relationship between author and reader is pretty brilliant. (And this from a reader who generally doesn't go in for these sorts of post-modern mind games.)The New Englandy, John Cheevery-ness of the setting and characterizations certainly didn't hurt in my eyes, either. I am a huge sucker for anything that gets at the spirit of where I grew up.

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all of the elements of fiction I get the most enjoyment out of style. I like good stories, well-told, but when the style dances around a bit or takes you on a new road, the pleasure is multiplied. Russell Banks is such an off-beat and distinctive stylist. In Hamilton Stark Banks uses unusual literary structures, interesting addenda, multiple point of view changes, frequent digressions, point/counterpoint dialogue that a debate coach would applaud, alternate names (often initials) of people and places and even alternate and parallel narrators. As an example of varied formats Banks provides a story-within-a-story chapter from Rochelle’s novel about Hamilton. There are excerpts from a recorded interview by Rochelle with Ham’s second wife. Perhaps the most unusual is Chapter Eight which is a catalogue of “100 Selected, Uninteresting Things Done and Said by Hamilton Stark.” The author is very much present in the story with lots of asides. He is more than a narrator and more than a character. I particularly enjoyed his self-referential dialogues with the reader.

Check him out. Banks is definitely not the “same-old, same-old.”

[T.D. Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

i've never read anything like Hamilton Stark before.

[David Swire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some fine writing, but I couldn't decipher the meaning.