The Darling

The Darling is a magnificent book, far ranging and very compelling. Russell Banks, like Wally Lamb, writes authentically in the voice of a woman, so much so that it is hard to believe this book was really written by a man. The woman's voice is that of Hannah Musgrave Sundiata, a.k.a. Dawn Carrington, the darling of the title. What a misnomer! She is anything but darling. Selfish, self-absorbed and admittedly lacking any maternal instinct whatsoever, Hannah is not a sympathetic character, in spite of all she endures, nor even a very likeable one. This is a story of a political radical's flight to W. Africa and her subsequent marriage to a black Liberian, which results in the births of three children. It is, of course, a tale of politics, race relations, and terrorism. But it is also a story of one woman's efforts to learn about herself and to make a life of value. Whether she ever succeeds at this goal is debatable. This book made me want to immediately delve into anything written by Russell Banks!

And read the works of Russell Banks. This guy knows about the real American condition and what has happened since the heady Kennedy years. Banks has written previously about ordinary Americans not the solipsistic, successful, sex-crazed stereotypes that inhabit Roth's fiction. The Darling is a brilliant portrayal of what happened to those who had their say in the '60's and more importantly how many of the same people came to blandly accept the inherent attractions of the capitalist way of life and ultimately support the Bush neo-conservatives in this new century. Nowadays even the Wall Street brokers say they didn't vote for Bush in 2004 as he was ruining the economy; forget about the casualties in Iraq. This novel portrays the hubris of American policy re Liberia where the emancipated slaves were sent to with the attitudes of their former masters, so much that they enslaved the locals. It also portrays, sadly,the powerlessness of the individual to make a difference in the American, read multinational corporate world - a latter day variation of imperialsim euphemisticly and mendaciously described as globalisation. The Darling is an essential book which shows the impotency of the individual, and, indeed, the third world, in this "global village". Hannah, in the last sentence of the novel,sadly realises this fact.

Once started, I could not put this book down and flew through it in a few days of spare-time reading. Written in the first person by the character Hannah, it is both an engrossing study of an extremely complex personality (her) as well as a mini-education in the history of Liberia. The character of Hannah is not a likeable one but I found her story to be facinating, and, unfortunately perhaps, I did see some of my own detachment from relationships reflected in hers. This is not a book for the faint of heart as it contains some explicit sexual situations as well as graphic violence. This was the first book I have read by this author and it certainly has sparked my interest in reading more of his books.

Russell Banks is a master at evoking a time and place. In his latest novel, The Darling, the reader is in Africa. It is the mid-1970s. We can see the Liberian coastline, smell the palm oil mingled with sweat, hear the screech of the chimpanzees and feel the claustrophobic heat. More importantly, we experience western Africa through the lens of a privileged, white American woman, Hannah Musgrove who is "the darling" of the title. Banks tells this historical and political story, most of it in flashbacks, skillfully and successfully through the point of view of this woman. Hannah is a fascinating character, full of tensions and contradictions. She has lead a sheltered life of wealth as the daughter of a famous and intellectual man, yet her politically liberal parents have instilled in her (sometimes seemingly in spite of themselves) a sincere empathy for the poor and oppressed. She is cold and calculating in her relationships with others yet has an almost mystical connection with the chimpanzees she comes to know and love and is passionate about her politics. Hannah makes some decisions, which she feels she needs to contextualize and explain herself to the reader in order not to seem "scary". To dwell on the plot, however, does this gem of a novel a disservice. Banks is simply a genius at conveying a difficult story and doing it so well that we care deeply about it.