Introduction

In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: when the worst thing happens, who do you blame?

Editorial Review

Atom Egoyan's Oscar-nominated The Sweet Hereafter is a good movie, remarkably faithful to the spirit of Russell Banks's novel of the same name, but Banks's book is twice as good. With the cool logic of accreting snowflakes, his prose builds a world--a small U.S. town near Canada--and peoples it with four vivid, sensitive souls linked by a school-bus tragedy: the bus driver; the widowed Vietnam vet who was driving behind the bus, waving at his kids, when it went off the road; the perpetually peeved negligence lawyer who tries to shape the victims' heartaches into a winning case; and the beauty-queen cheerleader crippled by the crash, whose testimony will determine everyone's fate.

We experience the story from inside the heads of the four characters in turn--each knowing things the others don't, each misunderstanding the facts in his or her own way. The method resembles Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Gilbert Sorrentino's stunning Aberration of Starlight, but Banks's achievement is most comparable to John Updike's tales of ordinary small-towners preternaturally gifted with slangy eloquence, psychological insights, and alertness to life's tiniest details.

Egoyan's film is haunting but vague--it leaves viewers in the dark regarding several critical plot points. Banks's book is more haunting still, and precise, making every revelation count, with a finale far superior to that of the film. It's also wittier than the too-sober flick: the lawyer dismisses the dome-dwelling hippie parents of one of the crash victims as being "lost in their Zen Little Indians fantasy," which casts a sharp light on them and him, too. He's lost in his calculations of how each parent will fit into the legal system, and the ways in which he fits into the tragedy are lost on him. If only he and the Vietnam-vet dad could read each other's account of their tense first encounter, both of them might get what the other is missing.

Banks's wit is pitiless--it's painful when we discover that the bus driver, who prides herself on interpreting for her stroke-impaired husband, is translating his wise but garbled observations all wrong. The crash turns out not to be the ultimate tragedy: in the cold northern light of its aftermath, we discover that we're all in this alone.

Excerpt

Dolores Driscoll

A dog--it was a dog I saw for certain. Or thought I saw. It was snowing pretty hard by then, and you can see things in the snow that aren't there, or aren't exactly there, but you also can't see some of the things that are there, so that by God when you do see something, you react anyhow, erring on the distaff side, if you get my drift. That's my training as a driver, but it's also my temperament as a mother of two grown sons and wife to an invalid, and that way when I'm wrong at least I'm wrong on the side of the angels. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

Questions from Publisher's Reading Guide:

1. Narrating the story of a tragic bus accident and how it affected the community of Sam Dent are four different characters. Do you think having multiple narrators was essential to the novel? Or do you think it was a distraction from the story? Was there a narrator who you trusted more than the others?

2. Each narrator tells his or her story in one chapter, with the exception of Dolores Driscoll. Why do you think the author framed the book with two chapters from the bus driver?

3. Although three of the four narrators were at the scene of the accident, we never learn what actually happened when the bus entered the water. Why do you think the author avoided showing us this scene?

4. "…because you can listen to children without fear, the way you can watch puppies tumble and bite and kittens sneak up on one another and spring without worrying that they'll be hurt by it, the talk of children can be very instructive. I guess it's because they play openly at what we grownups do seriously and in secret" (page 17). What do you think Dolores' comment reflects on in this story?

5. "And as I have always done when I've had two bad choices and nothing else available to me, I arranged it so that if I erred I'd come out on the side of the angels" (page 34). Do you think Dolores came out on the side of the angels?

6. "It's a way of living with tragedy, I guess, to claim after it happens that you saw it coming, as if somehow you had already made the necessary adjustments beforehand" (page 38). Do you agree with Billy -- that people feel the need to explain tragedies with predictions?

7. "Mourning can be very selfish. When someone you love has died, you tend to recall best those few moments and incidents that helped to clarify your sense, not of the person who has died, but of your own self" (page 43). Would you call Billy Ansel, a Vietnam vet who has lost his wife and children, a selfish person?

8. "I knew instantly what the story was; I knew at once that it wasn't an 'accident' at all. There are no accidents. I don't even know what the word means, and I never trust anyone who says he does" (page 91). Does Mitchell Stephens say this in order to justify aspects of his job? Or do you think there is some truth to his beliefs?

9. Russell Banks shows us both sides of the confrontation between Billy and Mitchell near the wrecked school bus. Each recounts the conversation (Billy in pages 83-85; Mitchell in pages 134-136) for the reader. Discuss where the text differs and whether this is significant to the characters or the story.

10. "We were becoming a strange family, divided between parents and children, and even among the children we were divided ... No one in the family trusted anyone else in the family” (page 198). Do you think Nichole's realization of her fragmented family life is what led her to lie at the courthouse? Do you think Nichole did the right thing by lying in court? Why or why not?

11. "The accident had ruined a lot of lives. Or, to be exact, it had busted apart the structures on which those lives had depended -- depended, I guess, to a greater degree than we had originally believed. A town needs it children for a lot more than it thinks" (page 235). What do you think Dolores means by this? Overall, what do the children in this novel represent?

12. What is the significance of the last scene with the demolition derby and Dolores' car Boomer?

13. "A close and haunting story of a small town in distress" (Mirabella), The Sweet Hereafter exposes our narrators' secrets to us, but not to each other (i.e. Billy's affair, Nichole's relationship with her father, Mitchell's struggle with his daughter, and the truth regarding Dolores' driving that day). Do you feel satisfied with the author's decision to keep these secrets veiled from the town? What is the one thing about this novel that haunts you still?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Excerpt
»	Publisher's Interview with Russell Banks
»	Publisher's Reading Guide
»	About the Author

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