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Russell Banks and Scott Spencer - The Nature of Memory
- 527 reads
At the center of Russell Banks new novel Foregone is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. It is a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man’s mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past. Set in late nineties, Scott Spencer’s latest novel, An Ocean Without a Shore follows Kip, a gay man in his forties who works at a small investment firm and has been in love with his best friend since their college days. Thaddeus Kaufman, married with children, owns a property he can’t afford and as a persona non grata in Hollywood is struggling to succeed as a scriptwriter. When Thaddeus’ latest writing effort bear no fruit, he finds himself in need of a bailout, so he gives Kip a call. This is a spellbinding and elegantly written novel that touches upon many themes, such as loneliness, love, family, memory, and money.
