Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter is one of my favorite novels of all time. Affliction is another excellent book. But despite the blurbs on the back of The Darling from Entertainment Weekly and USA Today claiming that this is the best book of the year, I thought it was only average.
The plot centers around Hannah Musgrave. Alienated from her parents, she drifts from the Weather Underground to Ghana to the central setting of the story, Monrovia Liberia. There she marries Woodrow Sundiata, a U.S. educated deputy health minister. This is in the mid-70s. Her husband survives the coup that topples the Tolbert government and installed Samuel Doe as president. But things really start going to hell when Sundiata gets between Doe and Charles Taylor (who would later depose Doe).
I have one major problem with the plot. Banks contrives ways to insert Musgrave into every major historical event in Liberia between 1975 and 1992. She’s not a central actor in most of them, but somehow coincidentally happens to be in the right place in the right time. It’s just too contrived.
I also had huge problems with the Musgrave character. She’s not interesting. She has no connection with any other character in the book. They are objects on a table to her, and not in useful manner. In other words, she doesn’t use people, nor is she used by them. She’s just there.
The thing I liked a lot about the book is that it’s central story tells the recent history of Liberia. It doesn’t really give much of any of the motivations and reasoning behind the characters and players. It does describe the scenes and the mayhem that was the government and the civil war, and that’s not something that most people have much connection with. The Darling lets us peek into that world. But overall it’s not enough for me to recommend this book.
Title: The darling
Author: Russell Banks
Imprint / publisher: Harper Perennial / HarperCollins
Format: Paperback
Length: 392 p.
Publication date: October 2005
ISBN-10: 0-06-095735-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-095735-3
Subject: Americans — Liberia — Fiction
Subject: Human-animal relationships — Fiction
Subject: Animals — Treatment — Fiction
Subject: Endangered species — Fiction
Subject: Women — Liberia — Fiction
Subject: Chimpanzees — Fiction
Subject: Liberia — Fiction
LC classification: PS3552.A49D37 2004
