willemite

Given the unsettled nature of the families in Russell Banks' dozen stories, the title of his sixth short story collection, A Permanent Member of the Family, might have a bit of an ironic aroma to it. Marriage is, if anything, impermanent here. The title character in Former Marine had to raise his boys alone after their mother took off. Philandering, while not depicted, is noted as causative in the demise of several other relationships in the collection. And even when a marriage has not dissolved, it is often shown to be or to have been threadbare. There are a few stories where things marital are not seen, Blue, The Invisible Parrot, but the tendency is to the sorry state of home and hearth. It is not surprising that marriage has such a central place in the author's work. His current marriage is his fourth.

all of us were fissioned atoms spun off nuclear families, seeking new, recombinant nuclei

Lines are drawn, and crossed. They separate before from after, denial from acceptance, uncertainty from realization. In Christmas Party, for example, a man is invited to the home of his ex and her husband for a party, and his underlying humiliation and rage must find an outlet before he can cross over from before to after. A singular event in the title story defines the place where the stretching of connections snaps.


The Author- from Wikimedia

The characters here often face moral choices, a favorite concern of Banks. Faced with financial stress in his old age, a Former Marine must make difficult decisions in order to be able to continue providing for his children, and later, in order to protect them. In Lost and Found, a businessman at a convention is confronted with the time when he brought a woman who was not his wife to his hotel room, and the decision he faced then. In Searching for Veronica, a woman confronts the guilt she felt for turning out of her home someone who was at great risk in the larger world. The choices are never black and white.

Banks sets his stories largely in the upstate New York town of Keene, his current residence, near Lake Placid, and Florida, his other current residence, so his descriptions of place ring with authenticity. He has a background as a politically concerned sort (he tried joining Castro