Summary and Reviews of The Darling by Russell Banks

Media Reviews

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

Hartford Courant/St Petersburg Times Banks creates a heroine every bit as complex and flawed as someone out of Jane Austen.

Newsweek Powerful and evocative...

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

Booklist - Donna Seaman Starred Review. Banks' dramatic interpretation of Liberia's real-life tragedies brilliantly extends the vital inquiry into the consequences of slavery found in Cloudsplitter (1997), and his meditation on our close ties to other species poses urgent questions about how our greed and cruelty result in the endangerment of not only animals but also human kindness, empathy, and peace.

Kirkus Reviews The Pulitzer-nominated author of Cloudsplitter (1998), among others, looks unsparingly at the bitter life of a 1960s revolutionary...Banks never makes it easy, but this is worth reading as a warning to anyone not chary of the children of privilege.

Publishers Weekly 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.

Library Journal - Edward B St. John 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.