An Omnibus Edition of Three Classic Early Novels from the Critically Acclaimed Author of Cloudsplitter and Affliction"Banks has skillfully used his repertoire of contemporary techniques to write a novel that is classically American--a dark, but sometimes funny, romance with echoes of Poe and Melville." -- Washington Post"A marvelously written little book, fascinatingly intricate, yet deceptively simple. Well worth reading more than once." -- New York Times Book ReviewFamily Life: Russell Banks's first novel is an adult fairy tale of a royal family in a mythical contemporary kingdom where the myriad dramas of domesticity blend with an outrageous slew of murders, mayhem, coups, debauches, world tours, and love in all guises, transcendent or otherwise.Hamilton Stark: This tale of a solitary, boorish, misanthropic New Hampshire pipe fitter--the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother--is at once a compelling meditation on identity and a thoroughly engaging story of life on the cold edge of New England.The Relation of My Imprisonment: Utilizing a form invented by imprisoned seventeenth-century Puritan divines--an utterly sincere and detailed, if highly artificial, recounting of great suffering--Banks's novel is a remarkably inventive, lovingly good-humored argument, exploration, and map of the caged religious mind.
