Foregone
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bedford Square Publishers
Published:21st Jun '21
£12.99
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
At the centre of Foregone is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex-star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife's wife and alongside Malcolm's producer, cinematographer, and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.
Imaginatively structured around Fife's secret memories and alternating between the experiences of the characters who are filming his confession, the novel challenges our assumptions and understanding about a significant lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory itself. Russell Banks gives us a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man's mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past.
The story of Fife's early life - heavily based on Banks's own - is graphic, gripping -- David Grylls * Sunday Times *
It's little wonder that Russell Banks has won major awards for his subtle, seductive novels, and Foregone - the author's first new novel for a decade - also deserves a place among prize-winners. Banks's style is haunting, meditative and gripping, with its protagonist's personal revelations striking compelling rhythmic, resonant beats * LoveReading (eBook of the month) *
The questions of what is true, what is a consequence of Fife's disintegrating mind, and whether the story of a life can ever be marshalled into a coherent whole, run through this...artful slice of meta-fiction like quicksilver. Hard-going sometimes, but worth it -- Claire Allfree * Daily Mail *
Foregone is, by far, the most cunningly metafictional novel of the author's career... Banks is one of the most sociologically minded of contemporary American authors... he is still working at the height of his powers... a tale of deep grace and significance... If Foregone turns out to be Banks's final novel (and, given its many strengths, one hopes not), it is a profoundly compelling valedictory -- Rob Latham * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Gripping, human, beautifully written - Foregone is there with the best of Russell Banks' work. I loved it -- Roddy Doyle
ISBN: 9780857304599
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
320 pages