Scathing Mr. Banks

Challenging a novel from a literary icon

This comes from the Department of Who the Hell Do I Think I Am, but man, did I land underwater on my latest read.

Russell Banks died on January 8, hailed as one of the most important novelists of the second half of the 20th century. My closest brush with him was The Sweet Hereafter, adapted from the Banks novel by Atom Egoyan into a delicate 1997 film starring Ian Holm and Sarah Polley. In the aftermath of Banks’ passing, I decided it was time to read him for real.

That led me to the 1985 novel Continental Drift, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize that fit my ongoing craving for modern adult stories. In one blurb, the New York Times called the book “a visionary epic about innocence and evil and a shattering dissection of contemporary American life.”

And now I can tell you that I finished Continental Drift kind of hating it.