Scan barcode
A review by utopologist
Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
4.0
There's a lot to like here if you're willing to go along with a sometimes meandering and very long journey. The prose is lush, both in describing the day to day of life in the mid-19th century and also in the innermost feelings that we have and never admit to anyone, even ourselves most of the time. I felt like I had known John Brown all my life, even with the unreliable and contradictory narration of Owen. By the end I had a portrait of a deeply flawed but even more deeply noble and principled man who felt the injustice of slavery in the marrow of his bones.
This is a fictional account, even if much of it is based off of information we know is true, and where it loses a star is in the subtle shift around halfway or two-thirds through where Owen reveals that he is the one who pushed Brown into actually taking up arms and going through with his most audacious actions. Owen becomes this calculating and experienced tactician very suddenly, and I never felt like he had "earned" that shift.
Beautiful book, though, even if Banks ultimately comes away seeming a little conflicted about whether or not John Brown was an insane religious zealot with noble goals or if he was a fervently religious but morally committed and consistent fighter.
This is a fictional account, even if much of it is based off of information we know is true, and where it loses a star is in the subtle shift around halfway or two-thirds through where Owen reveals that he is the one who pushed Brown into actually taking up arms and going through with his most audacious actions. Owen becomes this calculating and experienced tactician very suddenly, and I never felt like he had "earned" that shift.
Beautiful book, though, even if Banks ultimately comes away seeming a little conflicted about whether or not John Brown was an insane religious zealot with noble goals or if he was a fervently religious but morally committed and consistent fighter.