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History, layers, compelling characters abound in last Russell Banks novel

Review: “The Magic Kingdom,” by Russell Banks

North Country residents have mourned the January death of Russell Banks. We lost not just a great and famous writer, but a person who encouraged and supported artistic efforts in the Adirondacks. He served, for example, on the advisory board of the Adirondack Center for Writing, and was generous with his time and resources.

Banks wrote 14 novels, the last of which is “The Magic Kingdom.” Banks uses a frame to tell the “Magic Kingdom” story. He informs the reader he found audio tapes in a Florida public library, tapes on which Harley Mann recorded his life story. Sandwiched between the foreword and afterword is the edited transcription of the memoir Mann recorded on the 15 tapes Banks removed, surreptitiously, from the library.

There are three Harley Mann storylines on the tapes. It begins with his family’s migration from Illinois to the American South in the early 1900s. They are looking for work and community, and join a group of Shakers in New Bethany, Florida. There are seven in the Mann family — the parents, a daughter, and two sets of boy twins. The celibate Shakers welcome new members, and the Manns live their motto, “hands to work, hearts to God.”

Young Harley Mann absorbs Shaker doctrines, learning from his Shaker elders via rhyming lessons in New Bethany, and the community thrives. But the second thread in the audio tapes soon arrives in the person of Sadie Pratt, a young woman dying of tuberculosis. Harley falls in love, and 50 years later, records his memory of her, “where my Sadie had first tried and then failed to recover from her illness and my love for her had blossomed and bloomed and filled my heart and mind with its intoxicating perfume.”

But the Shakers do not survive, and Sadie passed away, and Harley Mann eventually becomes a real estate salesperson. He does very well, finally owning the 7,000 acres that was the Shaker’s New Bethany community. A man named Walt Disney buys the property to build his “Magic Kingdom.”

“Magic Kingdom” is a wonderfully creative narration. Russell Banks is part of the story, but he also created an 80-year-old narrator to chronicle a religious group, a family, an individual and a broken heart. There is history, philosophy, sadness and love. And Harley Mann’s is a voice you will not forget.

This last book by Russell Banks is like his others — full of history, compelling characters and layered stories. Is the “Magic Kingdom” part of the Shaker perspective or Disneyworld?

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