Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Banks, Russell - Donna Rifkind (review date 17 April 1992)

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Donna Rifkind (review date 17 April 1992)

SOURCE: Rifkind, Donna. “A Town Divided.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4646 (17 April 1992): 20.

[In the following review, Rifkind provides a stylistic and thematic examination of The Sweet Hereafter, praising the novel's subtle realism.]

“Gritty”, “muscular” and “vigorous” are the words most commonly used to characterize the writing of Russell Banks, whose blue-collar American tragedies have earned him big prizes and teaching positions in leading American universities. Much of the grit in Banks's work comes from autobiographical sources. The heroes of Continental Drift (1985) and Affliction (1989) hail from the same kind of wintry, disintegrating New Hampshire town in which he himself was brought up. His father, an alcoholic plumber, was surely a model for the abusive father in Affliction. And the seedier parts of Florida, where Banks lived for a...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Howard Frank Mosher (review date 8 September 1991)
   2. Jeff Danziger (review date 24 September 1991)
   3. Donna Rifkind (review date 17 April 1992)
   4. James Finn Cotter (review date 2 May 1992)
   5. Ross Leckie (essay date summer 1994)
   6. Richard Eder (review date 21 May 1995)
   7. Ann Hulbert (review date 29 May 1995)
   8. Penelope Mesic (review date 11 June 1995)
   9. Phil Baker (review date 30 June 1995)
   10. Brian Morton (review date 7 July 1995)
   11. Ed Peaco (review date fall 1995)
   12. Jerry Herron (essay date fall 1996)
   13. Robert Niemi (essay date 1997)
   14. Henry Mayer (review date 8 March 1998)
   15. Russell Banks and Christine Benvenuto (interview date March-April 1998)
   16. Alfred Kazin (review date 9 April 1998)
   17. Lawrence Hill (review date 13 April 1998)
   18. James M. McPherson (review date May 1998)
   19. Joyce Appleby (review date 22 May 1998)
   20. Russell Banks, Robert Faggen, and Barry Munger (interview date summer 1998)
   21. Millicent Bell (review date fall 1998)
   22. Paul Binding (review date 15 September 2000)
   23. Kathleen Snodgrass (review date spring 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright