When Banks describes Jordan's exploits in the Spanish Civil War (which take place in flash-forwards, interspersed throughout the main narrative), he resorts to a mannered imitation of Hemingway: "The big American dropped his bombs on the tanks, and the rest of the pilots did the same, and they destroyed many of them." When he is describing Vanessa's exploits with Jordan in bed, however, his prose abruptly downshifts into cloying soap opera cliches: "Making love with men like Jordan Groves let Vanessa Cole believe for a few seconds in the sustained reality of her essential being, even though afterward she could not remember ever having experienced it as such. Even though afterward it was as if self-awareness had been surgically removed and all she had to go on, all she was capable of experiencing, was its phantom."
The only character who actually comes across as a plausible human being is Hubert St Germain, a local Adirondack guide who works as a caretaker at Vanessa's family's house, and who has been having an affair with Jordan's disaffected wife, Alicia. Like many of Banks' most memorable characters, Hubert is a man who has been down on his luck and making do for many years. Think Sean Penn, kitted out in L.L. Bean gear, having wandered onto the wrong movie set.
Though Hubert takes pride in his knowledge of the woods and mountains, though he's proud of his competence and expertise, he leads a hand-to-mouth existence, and since the death of his wife in a car accident has been drinking to numb his loneliness. His affair with Alicia has begun to awaken him to the possibilities of life, but he will be drawn, willy-nilly, by Vanessa and Jordan into an act of criminal conspiracy that will forever alter all their lives.
Whatever sympathy the reader might feel for Hubert - the honorable, working-class rube, corrupted by two upper-class narcissists - isn't enough to redeem this cheesy, histrionic novel, a novel unworthy of a writer with as many gifts and as impressive a track record as Russell Banks.
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