Top Takes: The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks

Take another look at the post that, as of this writing, has the eleventh most pageviews on this entire blog:

The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks

This is a marvelous little book that uses four different narrators to explore the dark and painful repercussions that come with the loss of innocence. On the surface, the innocence in question is the lives of fourteen children from a small town called Sam Dent, who are killed in a school bus accident, but roiling away under the surface are the irrevocable thoughts and fears of our four narrators.

The four narrators come to represent a set of competing philosophies -- ranging from apathetic fatalism to domineering determinism -- but in the end we come to see that only one of them is able to dimly discern the truth of what has happened. And from that viewpoint we find the bitter and painful lesson that those who are to blame for tragedy rarely, if ever, get what's coming to them.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.