Short Fiction
A Permanent Member of the Family, 2013
"In a dozen woodcut tales -- firmly incised, deeply grained -- Banks distills the lives of people of unfailing grit enduring reduced or radically altered circumstances...A resounding collection by an essential American writer." --Booklist
"Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving." --Kirkus Reviews
"While these exquisitely crafted stories are highly personal, they are permeated by a sense of sadness about the death of the American dream." --Publishers Weekly
The Angel on the Roof, Selected Stories, 2000
"Russell Banks is a fearless author. He tackles themes and situations that other writers would not touch...His stories are devoid of pathos and display a level of intelligence and sensitivity rarely encountered in fiction." --Denver Post
"At his shattering best, Mr. Banks offers answers that are tough, honest and inevitable without being simple...A book that is not to be missed." --New York Times
Success Stories, 1986
"His prose has the precise force of a steady, measured outrage...He writes with a more merciless exactitude than Dreiser ever had, and with far greater and more self-conscious skill." --The Nation
"The best of these stories are understated in their honesty, and they speak from a granite center born of innocence lost." --Boston Globe
Trailerpark, 1981
"Each story is uncommonly good...surprising, lively writing and believably human characters...Banks has a terrific eye, mordant yet affectionate, for the bric-a-brac and the pathos of the American dream." --Washington Post
Trailerpark is a lucid, witty frieze of a book." --Saturday Review
"Mesmerizing...There are times when Banks's prose fairly dazzles." --Publishers Weekly
The New World, 1978
"Magnetically centered, the kind of unequivocally brilliant performance that one can't ever be sure of seeing twice in any writer's career." --Publishers Weekly
"All of Banks's stories are intriguing...If there's better fiction about lingering American puritanism, we don't know it." --Kirkus Reviews
"There is abundant talent at work here...The pace and settings are varied enough to transform the title into a true measure of the collection's achievement." --Booklist
Searching for Survivors, 1975
"What you'll remember is the sound of his voice, the rhythm of American speech patterns, as though he were seated beside you on a drive through the backwaters of New Hampshire." --Kirkus Reviews