Foregone

by Russell Banks

A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2021

A searing story about memory and betrayal from the acclaimed and bestselling Russell Banks

In his late seventies and dying of cancer, famed Canadian-American documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders who fled to Canada to avoid Vietnam, has agreed to one final interview, determined to bare all his secrets and demythologize his mythologized life. But the story that unspools in front of the camera and an intimate chorus of observers, including Fife’s wife, his nurse, and his acolyte and former star student Malcolm Macleod, is confoundingly unexpected, the dark and affecting account of a man entirely unknown to all.

A searing novel about memory, betrayal, love, and the faint grace note of redemption, Russell Banks’s Foregone is a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man’s mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Canada, Contemporary, Death, Novels

313 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 2, 2021

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

[Angela M · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars


When I finish reading a book , I’m almost always sure of what I think about it, how I feel about it . I can say that I didn’t really like this book, but it’s not as simple as that. It’s the story of a pitiful man, a famed documentary film maker in the last moments of his life, dying of cancer and seeking forgiveness from his wife and redemption for himself. Doing so by telling all of his sins and the lies he’s lived before a camera as a film is being made of him as he is dying. A morbid picture, I thought. I never really knew, even at the end what he is seeking redemption for because it’s never clear whether he’s telling the truth for various reasons. Someone else is making the film, but throughout it seemed as if Leo Fife was doing the directing, one last documentary with himself as the subject. There are a number of manipulative people on this film crew as well as Leo himself. I was left with some reflections on death, dying , on memory , but overall, it felt contrived and I felt somewhat manipulated, too . I’ve racked my brain, read the highly rated reviews for some enlightenment about whether I was missing something profound. I still don’t have the answer. Russell Banks is a highly acclaimed writer and this is the first book I’ve read by him. I think rather than taking my word here, looking at other reviews might help you decide if this is for you. You might find what I missed.


I read this with Diane and Esil for our ongoing monthly read .

I received a copy of this from the publisher, through Edelweiss.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Okay, I'm going to try to put my thoughts into words. A man is dying, his thought processes affected by drugs, disease but he wants at the end of his life, absolution, redemption. Wants his third? Wife to know the truth if his life. He is famous, a documentary film maker who has exposed various scandals in his life. So, he starts recounting his memories. Are they true? We don't even know how much was actually spoken out loud and we're not just memories, or thoughts, playing in his mind. At one point he thought five or six hours had gone by when just an hour and a half had? Lunch, no lunch?

This is not a happy little book but it does show all the regrets one has at ones end of life. The book reeks of desperation. Parts were a slog to get through, back and forth, wherever his diseased brain took him. Did all these things happen or not? Does it really matter, if this is what he believes? I can't say I liked this book but the underlying plot, point of the plot, is an important one. Redemption, confession, wanting to be truly known at the end of one's life. Still though, I found this to be a difficult book, challenging but it does make one think.

Monthly read with Angela and Esil. Not one of our favorites and hoping the next will be better.

[Esil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the first part of Foregone. The story is told from the perspective of Leo, a documentary film maker, as a documentary is being made of him, as he is dying of cancer. His mind wanders. He seems intent on telling truths that no one knows but it’s not clear what is true and what he is imagining. As the story progresses, Leo’s fragmented narrative becomes more intense. After a while, he lost me. I could appreciate what Banks was doing intellectually, but I lost interest in the story. At the end the day, it’s a bit suffocating to be stuck in someone else’s fragmented wandering dying mind. It was an interesting idea. There were moments of brilliance. But it didn’t sustain me, and I felt myself wandering back to my own thoughts. This was a buddy read with Diane and Angela. I think we all came away with lots of questions and and feeling somewhat spinny. Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this audacious—dare I say brilliant?—new work, Russell Banks’ character, Leo Fife—a documentary filmmaker just inches away from death—shines the spotlight on himself and what has been left unsaid.

The conceit is that Fife, with days remaining in his life, allows his acolyte, Malcolm MacLeod, to record his dark confession, with his wife, Emma, present. In the interest of true honesty, he reveals his past marriages, his desertion of the children he helped bring into the world, his betrayal of a best friend, his demythologized role as a deserter to Canada in the Vietnam War, and his forays with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez during that time frame.

But it would be a mistake to view Foregone as a plot-focused novel or to even take it at face meaning. Banks is setting his own spotlight on the role of memory: the complexity of our stories and their moral ambiguities, the reductive and selective way we remember them, the way that fantasies confabulation and even hallucinations affect what we recall, and how we shape how we want to be remembered.

Leo Fife tries to break free from his image—a fictional character created by others—to own the truths of his life, without anyone else doing the directing or editing of it. Russell Banks writes, “…standing at the meaningful center, is the hologram named Fife, Leonard Fife, a remembered version of the man as remembered by the man himself.”

To complicate the picture, Fife is the ultimate unreliable narrator, mixing memories and dreams and imagined details and memories, embedding whatever drifts his way. Are his memories accurate? Are they mostly accurate but rearranged by the intervening years? And then the reader also needs to look at the puppeteer—Banks himself—who, at 80 years old, shares some of the plot details with his character. Banks cautions us not to try too hard: “It’s like trying to tie a novel to the author’s real life…You can’t do it.”

And indeed, the reader truly can’t. Russell Banks is unique but not unique—his story of how we remember is universal. This is an affecting and self-challenging work that may turn off some readers who want to view it solely from the prism of Leo Fife’s life rather than expand it to the role of memory on elucidating that life. I owe a debt of thanks to HarperCollins’ imprint Ecco for providing me with an advance reader’s galley in exchange for an honest review.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library....overdrive...read by Stephen Mendel ....11 hours and 21 minutes

Soon after my library-audio arrived..I took a quick look at Goodreads to see if others had read it. I couldn’t remember anything about it.
Several of my friends rated it pretty low — a few pretty high — and a few an average 3 star rating.
I didn’t know what to think. I tried not to be influenced by the range of ratings.

So....here are my own thoughts.
I loved the beginning....fully drawn in. What’s the problem, I was wondering?....( not to fear...the flaws ‘were’ coming down the pipes)
Note...this is my first novel by Russell Banks

The premises was interesting. A documentary filmmaker, Leo Fife — ( dying of Cancer), known to his Canadian fans as ‘The Ken Burns of the North’....wants to confess his sins for the world to see....including reveal secrets his wife will soon learn - during the filming shoot.
HOLY CRAP.....
Was this a ‘Jerry Springer’ type - tell all- type novel?
Kinda sounded like it. Controversial topics -- trashy behaviors- perhaps a little self severing - self- indulgent - narcissistic truth telling?
Public shaming of self?
Or.....perhaps bitterness of dying - period?
Leo doesn’t seem to give a rats-ass about his reputation....or ‘exposing’ his private - hidden - past shitty choices ....
Plus....Leo’s ‘reveal’....his naughty memories....are questionable. He’s on so much pain-medication....that it makes him not only a cranky unlikable likable character but also an unreliable one....

I’m mixed about this novel
1....I’m glad I read it....( as I said the premises was kinda of fascinating)...
But
2...not all the specific stories ( as in storytelling itself), were all that interesting..

Ultimately what this book did for me was want to know a little bit more about the author. And I am definitely interested in reading something else he wrote.

But that’s it....
Liked it...
Didn’t hate it....
Didn’t love it....
But....
LIKED IT....

3.5 stars — rating down.
I do think Russell Banks is an interesting writer.
He knows how to write a thought-provoking-character novel anyway!

Suggestions for readers ‘favorite’ Banks book?

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no rhyme or reason to pandemic reading. I have struggled getting into any serious fiction lately. I have quit many more Banks novels than I've finished (before today I'd only finished one) and I have basically sworn off the subgenre of Books About Dying Men. And yet I finished this in less than a day, nearly in a single sitting. I can't explain it, it is what it is.

It has been so long since I've read a Book About a Dying Man that perhaps the whole trope has changed and my memories of it are outdated. But the ones I recall so often ended up being books about regret, and by regret I mean the regret these men had that they could no longer have sex with the women they once had sex with. Often they were catalogs of sexual exploits, grappling less with mortality and more with lost virility. I hated them. Especially because these men inevitably treated the women badly, tended to lean heavily into madonna/whore complexes, and the women themselves didn't seem to exist outside of objects of conquest. That, happily, was not this book.

It is certainly a book about a man who has treated women badly. And it is about one of those Great Men, a respected documentary filmmaker. And, to add another precarious level, it is about a man slipping into incoherence due to age, illness, and morphine. This is a lot to take on. Oh, and I have I mentioned that the whole thing takes place in a single day, where the Great Man's former student is filming him for a documentary about the Great Man himself? So many balls being juggled, so many ways for it to go wrong, and yet I found it satisfying in pretty much all of these elements.

The documentary element serves to ground the book, even though we are mostly inside Fife's head, the voices around him, the questions from the filmmakers, the presence of his wife nearby who he wants to confess to, and the occasional injection from his nurse, remind us--and Fife--of the present he is actually in, pulling him out of his memories. It also helps us have an idea of just how far off Fife is from the world around him. At times it seems he's just fine, and we think those around him are being overly cautious, but then we'll realize that he has lost some elements of reality and perhaps the mind we're inhabiting is not so straightforward. The documentary element also allows a little bit of swiping at the form, at the directors who continue to push and prod in directions Fife doesn't want to go, and who continue filming even when others ask them to stop and question Fife's ability to consent.

There are times when Fife's stories become more dreamlike, and as we go they are less straightforward narratives and more muddled. But the first half or so rings out clearly enough to get us really invested, so that we the readers know the broad strokes of what Fife wants to say, and can tolerate the jumping around pretty easily, while also recognizing that this is probably not all translating as it comes out of Fife's mouth to his listeners. There is a real urgency to it, from the first page. He wants to confess that his origin story is not what everyone thinks it is. This man, who came into public life after making a documentary about Agent Orange testing, and who presented himself as an American draft dodger seeking sanctuary in Canada, was not who he said he was. It is this time in his life that Fife focuses on and that we walk through, his time from his teenage years through his late-20's, when he cannot seem to do anything except create a life and then abandon it over and over again.

The focus on this one period in so much detail does make you wonder more about his life later, which we only see sideways, usually through references to his films. But it's clear that these are nearly two different men, and that helps to understand the confessional nature of what Fife wants to do, his desire to not lie about himself for once.

It's a book about death, too. Fife is thinking about it a lot. He is sick enough that there is nothing left to do for him. He has left the hospital to die at home. So it's unsurprising that death is on his mind, the way he is past fear of it and staring it straight in the face. He is frustrated by his physical deterioration and his inability to communicate, but I liked being in his head, seeing him as a valid being, even when the people around him didn't.

So yes I know this one sounds like a downer and I'm not saying it's not. But I read it in a day, in a fury almost. It's the strangest thing. I hope you can experience it the same way.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

During a career stretching almost half a century, Russell Banks has published an extraordinary collection of brave, morally imperative novels. The same marrow-delving impulse runs through them all, but otherwise it would be difficult to characterize such a vast and diverse body of work. Ranging across history and around the world, Banks has written about the abolitionist John Brown, political turmoil in Liberia, the plight of homeless teens, the purgatory of sex offenders and so much more. He traces the forces that influence whole societies as deftly as he explores the impulses that drive ordinary people.

At 80, Banks understands the mingled triumphs and humiliations of a long, complicated life. The central character of his new novel, “Foregone,” is Leo Fife, a documentary filmmaker known to his Canadian fans as “the Ken Burns of the North.” Leo has stopped cancer treatments and resigned himself to the inevitable. His life, once so illustrious, now hovers in the strange confluence of conflicting hospice timelines — suspended at the final precipice while he rushes frantically through the inventory of his past.

We meet Leo in that twilight moment, when a CBC crew arrives to interview him about. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inside a luxury apartment in Montreal with the windows blacked out, Leo Fife is living his last, being filmed by a protege. In a method that he himself developed in his career as a documentarian, he is surrounded by darkness only lit by a Speedlight illuminating his face. But as the memories surface, he ignores all the others in the room, only addressing Emma, his beloved wife of almost 40 years, confessing those parts of his life she has never heard of. But are they true. This elliptical novel is masterful in its approach and structure, almost going backwards through the memories, revealing a life in which Leo went from one abandonment to the next, betraying anyone who showed him a kindness or who loved him even if he didn't love them back. Wives. Children. Incomprehensible. But did they happen. Banks leaves it up to the reader to decide. I've loved the works of Russell Banks ever since Continental Drift changed the direction of my reading habits almost 40 years ago.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Warning: I just read a book about a man sharing his memories as he dies of cancer, and I hated it. Hence, this review is not going to be nice.

Let me theorize, based more on hunches than evidence: an embarrassing amount of 20th Century American literature is about rites of passage in the lives of upper-middle-class white American heterosexual males. The mid-century practitioners of this navel-gazing modernism - John Cheever, John Updike, John O'Hara, JD "John" Salinger, ad infinitum - are long gone, and the generation of writers they inspired - Richard Russo, Paul Auster, the good Mr. Banks, ad infinitum - are desperate to eulogize themselves. Unfortunately for these gentlemen, but fortunately for literature, more women and people of color are being accepted as "serious" writers, so cis-male memento mori like Auster's "1,2,3,4" and this book by Mr. Banks seem about as relevant to modern life as the Pyramids, and more self-indulgent. Read any book by an author whose life and experiences are shaped by the kind of social, cultural or economic forces that have no impact on people like Mr. Banks' protagonist, and the contrast is kind of dispiriting - do we really need books like "Foregone?"

Mr. Banks' confessional vessel is a semi-famous Canadian documentary filmmaker named Leonard Fife, who was born in 1940, just like (you guessed it) Mr. Banks and is now dying of cancer. Hs former proteges gather in his Montreal apartment to film him as he discusses his landmark films about draft evaders, cannibals, and sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Now, that might have been a pretty cool book. Instead, Fife ruminates about all the people he's abandoned in his life, which leads to flashbacks, the flashbacks within the flashbacks, creating multiple narrative arcs which never intersect or resolve. In fairness, Mr. Banks recreates the experience of listening to an old person ramble pretty well. In honesty, it bored me senseless.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foregone, as dictionary definition: 1) that has gone before; previous; past.
2) determined in advance; inevitable. Both those definitions categorically apply to Russell Banks’ latest novel, a story of the past, present and the inevitable. Banks’ use of the lexicon is searing and powerful; every page that you open has quotable passages and sentences, and ultimately refers to the protagonist, Leonard Fife, and his memories.

A Canadian American documentary muckraking filmmaker, Leonard Fife is dying of cancer, and he desperately wants to tell his wife the truth of his past. As he does so on camera, in a documentary about him, he pleads for his wife, Emma, to be in the room, so he can tell the unvarnished truth.

“Because in private he can’t keep himself from lying to her… …In private, one to one, he has complete control over everything he tells her, as if he doesn’t really exist… …When they’re alone…it doesn’t matter if what Fife says is true or false, because everything he says in private is both true and false and neither.”

Fife is practically a myth himself, a legendary documentarian who, as an American, evaded the Vietnam draft, and has stayed in Canada all these years hence. His past is full of secrets, however. The cancer has freed him—there’s no more ambition, nothing to promote, nobody to impress. The man he mentored is the ambitious one now, making the film this time, of Fife.

But Fife has gone off script, and is exposing the bare, stunning memories of his life, all for Emma’s ears. And, in telling Emma his story and correcting the record, he’s trying to stay alive. He knows he has only weeks or days to live.

“Time, like cancer, is the devourer of our lives. When you have no future, and the present doesn’t exist, except as consciousness, all you have for a self is a past. And if…your past is a lie, a fiction, then you can’t be said to exist, except as a fictional character.”

The above quote is the central grasp of this story. If our past, which doesn’t exist, is an artifact of our memories, and our memories aren’t linear, but rather, are fragments strung together, then what pieces of our past are true, and what is a fabrication of our minds and memories? But if all you have for a self is a past, and the past is fictional, then what are you as a person?

Fife has no future; he’s at the precipice of death. His only way to “exist” is to be true to Emma, so that he can remain real, and not fade to black as an imagined or invented person.

I have a particular passion for novels that are focused on the worldly, the temporal, and how our retained memories are braided into Time. If we can either make up a past, or misremember it, then does it exist? Banks explores this in a deep and often disturbing way, twining existence and memories into one another, folding and unfolding, raveling, twisting, weaving, and binding it all together—sometimes as a ligature, or a noose, and at other times a release, a final feeling of freedom from the fabric or fabrication of our lives.

Thematically and artistically, and with muscular prose, Banks is a giant among readers’ writers. My only disappointment centers on a conspicuous and paramount event, an incident that I recalled before it happened, because I perceived it would happen in a lesser author, but not Banks! But he did--he coopted a plot point from a 1969 movie, Alice’s Restaurant (a comedy with heft). My letdown is that Banks was either (on this one feature, but a primary feature) lazy or perhaps he incorporated the Guthrie plot point unconsciously. Either way, it stunned me. However, this is a resonant, beautifully tragic novel that deserves its praise and the audience of literature lovers.

Thank you to HarperCollins for sending me an ARC for review.

[Federica Rampi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Niente da nascondere, niente da perdere.


Leonard Fife, famoso documentarista canadese, colpito da un cancro che non gli lascia più speranze. viene intervistato da una troupe televisiva mentre vive i suoi ultimi giorni di vita.

Ha il viso illuminato da un riflettore e il corpo emaciato è avvolto nell'ombra.
Mentre Malcom, il giovane regista, vorrebbe concentrarsi sulla sua carriera, Fife invece decide di sfruttare l’occasione per fare i conti con il suo passato.
Alla presenza della moglie Emma, questo momento si trasforma in una confessione disarmante, un lungo monologo introspettivo sui suoi precedenti matrimoni, i legami, il rifiuto verso la sua città natale, la scelta di emigrare in Canada.

Vuole parlare, disfare tutto, alleggerire la memoria, scaricare il peso prima di morire, cercando di trovare nelle sue ultime ore chi è e chi era.

“Nasciamo e ci riempiamo i polmoni dell’aria terrestre, dopo di che si è liberi di fuggire.”

A poco a poco le temporalità si sovrappongono , il discorso mescola presente, passato, finzione e realtà in un flusso inesauribile, fondendosi gradualmente in un'unica linea dell'orizzonte dove il bisogno di assoluzione è più forte della morte che lo attende.

“Il dolore e i ricordi gli confermano che la sua esistenza continua. Non ha bisogno di testimoni per il suo dolore. Nessuno potrebbe capire. I suoi ricordi, però, non possono esistere a meno che non vengano ascoltati”

Senza filtri, come se tenesse in mano uno specchio capace di leggere oltre il viso, "l’eroe" di Banks rivela con profonda onestà che dietro la gloria c’è stata una vita piena di debolezze e colpi di genio, amori falliti e tradimenti
Lo fa dosando sapientemente l’equilibrio tra crudezza e sensibilità, collegando i flebili ricordi alla debolezza del corpo malato che nonostante tutto si aggrappa a quell’improvvisa vitalità che riemerge quando ripensa alla banalità del presente

La scrittura di Russel Banks è introspettiva lucida, mai lamentosa e attraverso la precisione dei dettagli e i tanti flashback riesce ad abbracciare la complessità di un personaggio grazie a una prosa di impressionante bellezza e perfettamente padroneggiata

Crepuscolare e catartico, I Tradimenti è un romanzo potente tormentato e commovente dall’atmosfera onirica e quasi cinematografica che costantemente ci interroga sulla memoria, le bugie, la verità.

Cosa lasciamo agli altri, dopo?

[Aitor Castrillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lectura conjunta organizada por La librería ambulante (Tamara y Juanjo están en Sevilla físicamente y también en los corazones de todos los que tenemos la suerte de conocerlos).

Los abandonos no ha sido una novela de esas que engancha bien fuerte, pero tiene algo que hace que quieras seguir leyendo. Su protagonista, el director de cine Leonard Fife, es un narrador poco fiable y acompañarle ha sido como cuando Canal + comenzó a emitir en España en 1990 y las rayas impedían ver bien las imágenes.

El relato autobiográfico de Fife es borroso, con mucho grano, en ocasiones se difumina y es como si estuviera desenfocado. Me he pasado toda la novela tratando de descodificar la manera en la que construye sus recuerdos y desconozco si mi interpretación de la historia coincide con la del autor. De hecho, no tengo del todo claro si el libro me ha gustado o no.

Verdades, mentiras, claros, oscuros, secretos, confesiones, luces y sombras hasta que la pantalla funde a negro. Como la vida misma.

[Carla · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book about a bad man doing bad things to other bad people. If you enjoy toxic masculinity and patriarchal navel-gazing, this is the book for you.

[Tasos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Κάποιος είχε πει κάποτε ότι όλες οι ιστορίες έχουν ευτυχισμένο τέλος αρκεί να ξέρεις πού να βάλεις την τελεία. Ο Λίο Φάιφ, κεντρικός ήρωας του μυθιστορήματος, βρίσκεται στο κατώφλι του θανάτου, στο τελευ��αίο στάδιο ενός μεταστατικού καρκίνου που έχει καταστρέψει το σώμα και το μυαλό του και θέλει την ύστατη στιγμή να βάλει αυτός την τελεία στο αφήγημα της ζωής του, αποκαλύπτοντας (αυτό που ο ίδιος θεωρεί) τον πραγματικό του εαυτό.

Διάσημος ντοκιμαντερίστας κι ένας μικρός μύθος στο χώρο του είδους και στους σπουδαστές του, φιλοδοξεί να κάνει την αποκάλυψη σε ένα κινηματογραφικό συνεργείο που έχει έρθει για τις ανάγκες μιας ταινίας με υποτιθέμενο θέμα τη ζωή του, την υστεροφημία και την παρακαταθήκη του, δηλαδή έναν ζωντανό επικήδειο για τη δημόσια εικόνα του. Όταν, όμως, ο Φάιφ αρχίζει να μιλάει μπροστά στην κάμερα, αυτά που λέει πόρρω απέχουν τόσο από αυτά που έλπιζαν οι γύρω του, αλλά κυρίως από αυτά που θέλει εκείνος.

Γιατί στο κατακερματισμένο του μυαλό αυτά που βγαίνουν από το στόμα του είναι ένας παραληρηματικός επιθανάτιος ρόγχος, ένα συνονθύλευμα από αναμνήσεις, όνειρα, προδοσίες και απωθημένα, όπου κανείς δεν ξέρει που ξεκινά η αλήθεια και που τελειώνει το ψέμα. Σαν μια ταινία τεκμηρίωσης από την οποία λείπει η τεκμηρίωση.

Τριάντα περίπου χρόνια μετά την πρώτη μου γνωριμία με τον Ράσελ Μπανκς και το Γλυκό Πεπρωμένο του, που έγινε μια υπέροχη ταινία από τον Ατόμ Εγκογιάν, διάβασα ξανά φέτος βιβλίο του Αμερικανού συγγραφέα και πάλι λόγω μιας ταινίας, αυτή τη φορά από τον Πολ Σρέιντερ.

Αυτό που θαύμασα εκ νέου είναι το πόσο ατρόμητος συγγραφέας είναι είτε όταν γράφει για την τραγωδία ενός πολύνεκρου τροχαίου με παιδιά στην αμερικανική ενδοχώρα, είτε κάνοντας τον απολογισμό της ζωής ενός ηλικιωμένου άντρα με έντονα αυτοβιογραφικά στοιχεία, αφού στο Oh, Canada, το προτελευταίο βιβλίο του, ο Μπανκς έχει «χαρίσει» στον Φάιφ και δικές του νεανικές αναμνήσεις.

Αν και με έναν εξ ορισμού αναξιόπιστο αφηγητή στο επίκεντρο, το Oh Canada είναι ένας αναπόφευκτα επώδυνος αλλά εν τέλει διαυγής και λυτρωτικός στοχασμός για την αλήθεια και το ψέμα, τα όρια και τις ψευδαισθήσεις της καλλιτεχνικής δημιουργίας και το πόσο ανέφικτο είναι να θες να αποδράσεις από τον εαυτό σου αφού καταλήγεις νομοτελειακά και προκαθορισμένα (όπως είναι ο πρωτότυπος τίτλος του βιβλίου) σε αυτόν.

Fade Out

[Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leonard Fife is dying from cancer and as last chance to make an inpact he agrees to do an interview, in which he's going to bare all his secrets and hopefully get redemption before he dies.
It was interesting enough, liked the inner monologue of Leo in one part particularly. It wasn't nothing groundbreaking or amazing but I thought it was alright. Couldn't really pick apart something with big meaning in the book and I'm not quite sure if he got redemption in the end but maybe I didn't listen hard enough. It's not quite a meh book but nothing I will think about and I'll probably will forget about it.

[Renée Roehl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope.

I can understand why Emma (the wife) did not want to stay in the room (repetitively repetitive within this ridiculous unwieldy frame) listening to her decaying-before-our-eyes husband because there is no "there there" in this badly-paced, repetitive (did I say this already?) "historical" and empty novel that appeared to have no purpose.

I *really* dislike when I feel duped by an author who writes well enough for me to think this story will land somewhere and so after the half-way mark, I testily read, skipped & skimmed to an ending where the only genuine human being is the nurse.

And, BTW, there was nothing "searing" about this book, just a mostly boring indulgence.

[Paul-François ALBERTINI · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roman intime, testament littéraire de son auteur se sachant condamné par le cancer. Livre sur le processus de mort et les souvenirs de la vie. Rage contre la déliquescence de l'être auquel le désir, la jeunesse et l'espoir sont désormais proscrits. Fleuve d'intranquilité plein de bruit et de fureur, et qui ne signifie rien.

[Steve Essick · Rating 5 out of 5]

About five years ago I reread David Copperfield because I was looking for one specific passage that haunted me from my original reading approximately thirty years previously. That sentence is :” I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished”. The sentiment expressed here embodies the core of Russell Banks’ wonderful new book, #Foregone. Whether consciously or unconsciously', we’re all constantly writing our autobiographies, and the older we become the more nonfiction morphs into fiction. The question for each of us is the degree to which this happens. In #Foregone, Leonard Fife, a dying American/Canadian documentary filmmaker becomes the focal point of a Canadian Documentary in which he gets to provide the story as he remembers it. The fact that he is at the end of his life and full of Chemotherapy drugs and painkillers makes the veracity of his story questionable. Add to this the fact that being a film documentarian himself,Fife is fully aware that the completed story will be manufactured by the filmmakers themselves', and probably vastly different from the story he is telling to the only audience he cares about, his wife Emma. In #Foregone, Russell Banks has created a thought provoking and compelling novel- one that is not to be missed.

[Katerina Koltsida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Η ωραιότερη ιστορία που φτιάξαμε ποτέ, είναι εκείνη που οι ίδιοι επινοήσαμε για τη ζωή μας.

4.07 τη νύχτα (ή μήπως το ξημέρωμα;) και κοιτώ αποσβολωμένη το εξώφυλλο, προσπαθώντας να συνέλθω από την απρόσμενη αισθηση που μου έχει προκαλέσει το OH, CANADA του Russell Banks.

Ως αναγνώστρια προτιμώ να γνωρίζω όσο το δυνατό λιγότερα για τα βιβλία που επιλέγω. Θέλω να βουτω στα βαθειά νερά της συγγραφικής πένας δίχως πυξίδα. Να ταξιδέψω μόνη μου.

Έτσι, ξεκίνησα κι αυτή την κατάδυση στον πυθμένα της ανθρώπινης μνήμης. Εκεί που η αλήθεια έρχεται αντιμέτωπη με την εικόνα.
Κι ο συγγραφέας ειναι αδυσώπητος. Ποιος έχει το σθένος να αποκαλυφθει; Πόσο δύναται να το πράξει κι ως ποιο σημείο θα φτασει; θα ξεγυμνωθεί ή θα κρυφτεί, ξανά, πίσω από εύκολες στροφές; Η βούλησή μπορεί να υπερνικησει την ανάγκη μας να κρατησουμε την εικονα που επιπονα δημιουργήσαμε; ο νους μπορεί να επιβληθεί πάνω στο αδύναμο, ασθενές σώμα απ το οποίο ξεγλυστρά η ζωή;

Ένα εκπληκτικό κείμενο.

[Annalisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Questa lettura non mi ha convinto; anche se non l’ho abbandonata, inizialmente ero molto tentata di farlo. Le tre stelle sono un po’ stiracchiate, merito di una prosa ben costruita, capace di rappresentare il paesaggio naturale, umano, sociale con una certa efficacia.
Quello che del romanzo non mi persuade è l’idea di raccontare brandelli di vita e di memoria di un personaggio la cui identità rimane sfuggente e incompleta e per questo poco soddisfacente. Che la memoria poi sia inattendibile, spesso piegata alla “narrazione” che ci costruiamo (se questo è quello che Banks vuole suggerire) è un tema già percorso moltissime volte e in moltissimi modi, anche più potente di quello che fa l’autore, a mio gusto almeno. Mi è piaciuta poco anche la “cornice”, il legante di questi brandelli che trova una conclusione un po’ frettolosa.

[Έλσα · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ο Λέοναρντ Φάιφ ένας ντοκιμαντερίστας δίνει μια συνέντευξη εφ’ όλης της ύλης λίγο πριν πεθάνει από καρκίνο. Αποκαλύπτει κομμάτια της ζωής του που ήταν μέχρι τότε κρυφά. Όλοι τον έχουν ως ήρωα στο μυαλό τους αλλά αυτός επιλέγει να αποκαλύψει πτυχές της ζωής του που αγνοούσαν ακόμα κ άτομα του στενού του περιβάλλοντος.
Μυστικά, ψέματα, προδοσία, επιλογές που σημάδεψαν τη μετέπειτα πορεία της ζωής του. Γάμοι, παιδιά, εγκατάλειψη, φυγή. Μια ζωή γεμάτη αλλαγές.
Στην ουσία ο Λίο έχει ως στόχο μέσω της συνέντευξης να απομυθοποιηθεί από τους μαθητές του αλλά κ να τον γνωρίσει η τωρινή του γυναίκα…
Μια ιστορία που η αλήθεια της κρατά τον αναγνώστη σε εγρήγορση κ αναζητά να του γνωστοποιηθεί η ταυτότητα ενός ανθρώπου που όλοι θαύμαζαν.

[Donna Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Oh, Canada!”

Leonard Fife is a legendary filmmaker, his searing social commentary an important part of North American history. But now he is dying, and he has a few things he needs to get off his chest before he goes. My thanks go to Net Galley and Harper Collins for the review copy. This book is available to the public March 2, 2021.

Fife is not a lovable character, and now that the end is near, he wants everyone to know it. With the cameras trained on him, darkness all around him but for the spot shining on him as he speaks, he tells his life’s story, and he spares himself nothing. One relationship after another, abandoned without even a goodbye. Children left fatherless. Lives laid waste in his passing. Banks is one of the most brilliant novelists in the U.S., and his word smithery can turn nearly any terrible story into spun gold, but he never pulls punches. His writing is often painful to read, and here it is true in spades, agonizing. By the halfway mark, I am watching the page numbers crawl by and wishing it over.

But of course, there’s a surprise in store.

I don’t want to give spoilers, but in the last half of the book, the question arises as to whether our narrator is reliable. He says he did all of these dreadful things; but did he really…?

The book flows so seamlessly that the difficulty of writing it is not obvious, but here it is: almost the entire thing is one man’s narrative. There’s very little dialogue. It’s not an easy thing to carry off, and yet, this is Banks, and he does.

As his narrative unspools, we are occasionally reminded of his current circumstances by breaks in the action. Once in awhile he is overtaxed and starts to drift off, or worse, and action has to cease immediately while the nurse does important things quickly. Now and then she has to change his bag, or help him onto the toilet and wipe his butt afterward. There’s not a lot of dignity left to the man. But he doesn’t give a…okay, I’m not saying it.

As he insistently recounts his many betrayals of loved ones, ignoring the more suitable, conventional questions that the people filming him thought were going to provide the framework of the film, he makes it crystal clear that it doesn’t bother him in the slightest, what he is doing to his legacy. Torpedo all of it; hell, he’ll be dead before the film opens. What he wants is to be truthful, and the one person he wants to know the truth is Emma, his wife. He knows he cannot be truthful with her unless the camera is rolling, and he won’t proceed unless she is there. RIGHT there. He calls for her many times, making certain she hasn’t left. And through the occasional things she says, we are aware that Emma is not merely his arm candy, not a sycophant that married him for fame, fortune, or prestige; she’s a respected professional in her own field, juggling her own commitments in order to be present here and now for Leonard.

By the time the story ends, my feelings have changed. Leonard is still no angel, but he’s not the sack of excrement I believed him to be, either. The guy I hate at the end is the filmmaker, once Leonard’s protegee, but now wolfishly eager for his mentor to die on camera for him. The nurse orders the camera turned off, but the director calls over the top of her to keep it rolling, the vulture. I want to smack him!

Ultimately we see that death is a final betrayal, a form of abandonment; but Leonard is at peace, because his goal is realized. And this is the story’s title, but I am not going to tell you how that works.

Get the book and read it. All your own sorrows will feel smaller.

[Roger · Rating 1 out of 5]

0-stars. Zero-stars. Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

Foregone is now in my top 3 worst books I've ever read. I have never read a story so pointlessly useless in my entire life. At least the others have some semblance of a story that keeps you moving along. This promises some enormous revelation that never comes. It's a lie.

The rest of this review will be a bunch of rambling but will hopefully clear-up my big issues with the book, besides the book existing.

Fife constantly asks if his wife Emma is there every other chapter because she needs to hear the truth and know how things really were, but at no point during his incoherent, pointless ramblings does anyone react remotely surprised. Maybe that's the intent. Either way it fails at whatever it's trying to be. This is also paired with Malcolm asking if Fife is still okay to film, Emma says no, Fife says I'm fine, Emma grumbles, they change the camera's card because they run out of room every monologue and the camera gets hot.

Details are added that don't matter. Fife mentions lighting a cigarette on a plane and Malcolm interrupts because he's shocked by this, but then remembers it was done in 1968 and says sorry, get back to it. There's a section dedicated to the discussion of opening a joint checking account; not long after this there are roughly 2 pages dedicated to him driving and describing how that's going. At one point Fife goes into a pharmacy to buy a map and we get a full paragraph on who the teenage girl behind the counter could be and what she might be up to.

Fife compares himself to Pinocchio which ends up being one of the most awkwardly contrived comparisons I've ever read, which he discusses with his caretaker Renee, before turning into a conversation on it being made into a Disney movie and that she would like the movie over the book because she believes in the resurrection? Ugh.

Time period inconsistencies happen every so often, such as Fife in the late 60's having a Moleskine notebook, even though they weren't founded until 1997. It's only to be referential not accurate.

We are consistently reminded of how important Fife was and that he'll go down in history with this interview that's being conducted and not to worry because he'll be done justice. If you're going to prop up your subject at least make him interesting.

The rambling chapters mostly read like the narrator, who is supposed to be Malcolm but then isn't when it needs to be, is just feeding you information you would find on a Wikipedia page, sprinkled with timely facts that add nothing to the story. It's all useless.

I hate this book. I absolutely hate it. Would not recommend. Would not read another book by this author. I feel like I've lost years off my life after this.

Thank you to Ecco and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this novel, even though I was late getting to it.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foregone is award-winning author Russell Banks's first novel for a decade, and boy was it worth the wait. It's 2018 and in his late seventies and dying of cancer, famed left-leaning Canadian-American documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders who fled to Canada in 1968 to protest and avoid the Vietnam War, has agreed to one final interview. He is determined to bare all his secrets and demythologize his mythologized life; this is despite being shackled to a wheelchair, under the influence of intravenous morphine and bearing a bladder bag.

The production team sets up their recording equipment, much to Leonard's chagrin, and he wonders why he agreed to partake in such an interview to discuss his rich life and influential work. But the story that unspools in front of the camera on April 1, 2018, in front of an intimate chorus of observers, including Fife’s wife, his Haitian nurse, and his acolyte and former star student Malcolm Macleod, is confoundingly unexpected, the dark and affecting account of a man entirely unknown to all.

This is a compelling and intelligent novel addressing issues including the fallibility of memory, age-related amnesia, the effect disease has on the psyche and the propensity of guilt to eat away at you from within. It hauntingly explores the conscientious objectors who opposed the Vietnam War and is a subtle, seductive page-turner. A searing novel about memory, betrayal, love and the faint grace note of redemption, Russell Banks’s Foregone is a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man’s mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past, and how little we truly know about ourselves and others. Highly recommended.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this novel irresistible in the beginning but at about half way through, it started to get repetitive and boring, enough so that I put it down and didn't finish it.

Leonard Fife, now dying from end-stage cancer, has agreed to one last interview that his interviewers think will focus on why he escaped to Canada to avoid the Vietnamese war. Leo has other ideas and takes over the interview without letting the interviewers get a word in edgewise.

Leo talks incessantly about his early life, his first and second marriages, and the convoluted ways he made it to the top as a liberal documentary film maker.

Leo goes back and forth in time and he is difficult to understand. His ramblings are not cogent not are his reasons for going back so far in time. His solipsism gets old fast and wore me down. I kept hoping for new revelations but they were not forthcoming. I am sad to say that this is not a book for me.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first taste of Russell Banks writing, and honestly, I was not blown away. The premise of an old documentary filmmaker committing to film a full deathbed confession was interesting, but at times overwrought and often overwritten. Maybe other readers will respond to this book differently, but I never had that much sympathy for the narrator, and what little I had was bled away by what a relatively reprehensible person he turns out to be.

My list of potential 2022 Pulitzer Prize winners here.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Russell Banks is a writer that I always expect to deliver a story in an emotional territory way beyond what most authors dare tread upon. His book The Sweetafter is a good example as it deals parents griefing over the loss of a child. This book however is difficult to relate to as drags slowly on and the main character is not engaging.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an odd fuckin’ book... for the first 285 pages, you’re like WTF...?? Then, suddenly, in the final moments, it all collapses into place. Jesus H. Christ...

[Paco Serrano · Rating 3 out of 5]

A la postrimería de la muerte, el cineasta Leonard Fife decide contar su vida a unos documentalistas. Pero solo lo hará si está presente en todo momento su esposa, a quien le ha ocultado cosas de su pasado en EEUU, antes de emigrar a Canadá. Empieza entonces el relato a trompicones de este cineasta que aparentemente salió huyendo de su país para no combatir en Vietnam, al menos esa es la versión oficial.

Me encantó la forma de narrar de Russell Banks, aunque la novela en su conjunto no me terminó de encantar.

[Courtney Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m pretty sure all of this guys books are crap. Do yourself a favor if trying to read a dead author this year - pick a different one. Might I suggest Octavia Butler?

This was so rambling and so awful I have nothing else to say.