Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Banks, Russell - Lawrence Hill (review date 13 April 1998)

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Lawrence Hill (review date 13 April 1998)

SOURCE: Hill, Lawrence. “Gory, Gory, Hallelujah.” Maclean's 111, no. 15 (13 April 1998): 64.

[In the following review, Hill offers a mixed assessment of Cloudsplitter but concludes that it is a “profoundly moving novel.”]

American literary giant William Faulkner wrote his celebrated short story “Barn Burning” from the point of view of a boy. The tale's brilliance emerged not so much in the details of the man who dealt his enemies horrid strokes of violence, but in the way Faulkner presented the villain through the eyes of his young son. In Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks's epic about the life of John Brown—a white man who became the most violent and uncompromising anti-slavery advocate in U.S. history—the novelist has also chosen to tell the story from the vantage point of the main character's son, Owen. That strategy brings the reader within intimate reach of John...

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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