The Darling is not a perfect book -- its very expansiveness of vision and range make that almost impossible -- but it is admirable, compelling, always surprising and never cliched. At the end of his chronicle, Banks takes a daring last step of reminding us that, despite what she has witnessed, Hannah is one of the privileged of the earth, ''an American darling,'' whose story, after the planes went into the towers, ''could have no significance in the larger world.'' These last mordant notes provide a brilliantly sour decrescendo to Russell Banks's symphony of history, politics and impossible, failed dreams.
— The New York Times

For years now, Russell Banks has explored race, political dramas, migrations. As our best novelists must do, he creates multidimensional characters, stories that make you think how life really must be, or once happened to be. It is not for Banks -- whose last novel, Cloudsplitter, told of John Brown's messianic odyssey during America's era of slavery -- to offer the thin novella that so often passes these days for literature. His are big novels, with daring, sweep and depth. In The Darling, he is working at full strength, and readers are in his debt.
— The Washington Post

Six years after the publication of his much-lauded novel Cloudsplitter, Banks returns with a portrayal of personal and political turmoil in West Africa and the U.S. The darling of the title is narrator Hannah Musgrave, a privileged child of the turbulent 1960s and '70s, who now, at 59, reflects on her life. After participating in freewheeling sexual experimentation and radical politics, Hannah is wanted by the FBI for her involvement in the Weather Underground. Under an assumed name, she flees the U.S. for Africa, traveling first to Ghana, then Liberia, where in 1976 she meets and marries Woodrow Sundiata, a government official. Taking on another identity that of foreign wife, and eventually mother to three sons Hannah finds herself increasingly involved with the highest members of Liberia's government as Woodrow's political star rises. She also finds purpose in establishing a sanctuary for endangered chimpanzees. When Liberia explodes into civil war, Hannah's life and the lives of her family are in danger. Readers will be stunned by the gut-wrenching (and often foolish) decisions she makes and by the horrifying outcome of her association with key figures such as Liberian president Samuel Doe and insurgent Charles Taylor. An articulate and keenly observant narrator, Hannah explains Liberia's history and U.S. connections as smoothly as she reflects on tribal practices, the fate of chimpanzees and her own misguidedness. Better yet, for the purposes of good storytelling, she is conflicted and selfish, and often na ve despite her wide experience. She emerges as a fascinating figure, striking universal chords in her search for identity and home, though her life may ultimately be a study in futility. A rich and complex look at the searing connections between the personal and the political, this is one of Banks's most powerful novels yet. Agent, Ellen Levine. (Oct. 7) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Hannah Musgrave, the privileged daughter of a prominent left-wing pediatrician, throws herself into the antiwar movement of the 1960s, joins the radical Weather Underground, and ends up on the FBI's most-wanted list. She flees to Liberia, impulsively marries a government minister, and then switches allegiance to notorious warlord Charles Taylor. This is an intriguing development, since Taylor is a real person frequently in the news for his involvement with "conflict diamonds." Unfortunately, he makes only a cameo appearance here. Hannah herself is utterly unconvincing, both as a revolutionary and as a woman, and it is impossible to feel much sympathy for her. While her motives are impeccable, her actions inevitably backfire and result in appalling carnage. Banks explored the themes of radical idealism and racial struggle with much greater success in Cloudsplitter, his take on abolitionist John Brown. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/04.] Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

The Pulitzer-nominated author of Cloudsplitter (1998), among others, looks unsparingly at the bitter life of a 1960s revolutionary. Banks's portrait of John Brown showed readers an uncompromised understanding of salvation-mindedness that he applies with surgical skill here, in the story of Hannah Musgrave, only child of a Benjamin Spock-like leftist pediatrician and his supportive but self-effacing wife. Educated at Rosemary Hall and Brandeis, Hannah, a gifted mathematician and mechanic, chucked med school at the last minute to join the Weather Underground, determined to overturn the government. In the thick of the dramatic unfoldings of the late '60s, Hannah skipped bail in Chicago to go deeper underground, lived with a succession of revolutionary cells and lovers of both sexes, and ultimately fled to Africa with a trust-funded fellow Weatherman from Cincinnati. Striking out on her own, Hannah crosses from Ghana into Liberia, the strange semi-colony established by American abolitionists before the Civil War, where she finds that the revolutionary past she's tried to hide is an open secret-and that her whiteness is both protective and problematic in the odd society founded by freed slaves. Her medical training leads to a job collecting data from chimpanzees that have been taken from the wild for infection with hepatitis for research, and Hannah's attachment to the sad primates is the first true affection she's felt for anyone in her life-stronger even than the bond for the three boys she will bear after a cynical marriage to American-educated Woodrow Sundiata, a minor Liberian government official from a favored tribe. Neither her tribal connection nor her education is enough to save thefamily from the disasters that follow the fall of the corrupt president-but Hannah's connections are enough to bring her yet another and undeservedly good life back in the States. Banks never makes it easy, but this is worth reading as a warning to anyone not chary of the children of privilege. Author tour. Agent: Ellen Levine/Trident Media Group

"Russell Banks’s work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time. You find the craziness of false dreams, the political inequalities, and somehow the sliver of redemption. I trust his portraits of America more than any other—the burden of it, the need for it, the hell of it.” — Michael Ondaatje

“Russell Banks’s twentieth-century Liberia is as hellish a place as Joseph Conrad’s nineteenth-century Congo. The only creatures that behave with humanity are the apes. A dark and disturbing book.” — J. M. Coetzee

“Banks’s novel is a vivid account of a time of terror, exposing the secrets of the soul.” — O magazine

“A former American radical returns to war-torn Liberia to look for the sons she left behind ten years earlier. In this disquieting book—something of a thematic sequel to Cloudsplitter, his 1988 novel about avenging abolitionist John Brown—Banks takes on Charles Taylor, Western idealism, and the moral consequences of looking the other way.” — Details

“Powerful and evocative.” — Newsweek

“Banks creates a heroine every bit as complex and flawed as someone out of Jane Austen.” — Hartford Courant

“The real achievement here is the creation of Hannah; she’s one of the few recent literary characters I expect I’ll remember, and the book itself is the most engaging one I’ve read all year.” — Charlotte Observer

“Extraordinary...Hannah offers a first person narrative so moving, so pitiless, so rare in contemporary fiction that it embodies Aristotelian catharsis... Banks is that rare epic novelist.” — Baltimore Sun

“Hannah’s story shows why Banks ranks among our boldest artists.” — Boston Globe

“Admirable, compelling, always surprising and never clichéd.” — New York Times Book Review

“In The Darling, he is working at full strength, and his readers are in his debt.” — Washington Post Book World

“Once again, he has produced a novel that is searing, demanding and unforgettable.” — Newsweek

“Banks has written a novel that is utterly accessible, forcefully wrought and undeniably passionate.” — Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“Banks’ mastery of his material makes this a compelling and important book.” — Orlando Sentinel

“Extraordinary. . . Banks is the rare epic novelist.” — Virginian Pilot

In The Darling, he is working at full strength, and his readers are in his debt.

Banks creates a heroine every bit as complex and flawed as someone out of Jane Austen.

Once again, he has produced a novel that is searing, demanding and unforgettable.

Banks’s novel is a vivid account of a time of terror, exposing the secrets of the soul.

Banks has written a novel that is utterly accessible, forcefully wrought and undeniably passionate.

A powerful new novel.

Hannah’s story shows why Banks ranks among our boldest artists.

Banks’ mastery of his material makes this a compelling and important book.

Reverberating with ideas and startling prose.

Extraordinary...Banks is the rare epic novelist.

Banks has created a heroine every bit as complex and flawed as something out of Jane Austen.

Once again, he has produced a novel that is searing, demanding and unforgettable.

Banks’ mastery of his material makes this a compelling and important book.

Banks has written a novel that is utterly accessible, forcefully wrought and undeniably passionate.

"Banks’s novel is a vivid account of a time of terror, exposing the secrets of the soul."

Banks has written a novel that is utterly accessible, forcefully wrought and undeniably passionate.

Like many of Banks’s works, this novel unfolds like a memory for the reader, taking a natural route into the imagination and leading from there. As the novel opens, Hannah’s dreams are invaded by memories of Africa, leading her to revisit her past there in an attempt to reconcile old ghosts. This audiobook is performed with gentle, reserved skill by Mary Beth Hurt, whose style and delivery are as appealing as that of a dear friend recounting her own anecdote. Quiet and yet dramatic, familiar but so very foreign, THE DARLING is a memorable listen for its contemporary echoes of the hope, fear, and tragedy that can erupt when cultures collide. L.B.F. 2005 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine