The Sweet Hereafter

As its title implies, Massachusetts-born Russell Banks' The Sweet Hereafter focuses not on the climax of an event but its aftermath. Beginning with a tragic bus crash in which fourteen children are killed, Hereafter is narrated by four very different individuals living in a small upstate New York town. Dolores Driscoll, the chatty bus driver, introduces the events and its key players. Billy Ansel, a widower who loses his twin children in the crash, attempts to organize his grief by tying it to the tragic momentum of his life, beginning with his part in the Vietnam War. Mitchell Stephens, a zealous negligence lawyer, seeks to settle the score for the townspeople and his own satisfaction. Finally, teen beauty queen Nichole Burnell, who is confined to a wheelchair after the crash, sees the accident as her one path to an autonomous life free from her abusive father. These are narrators who tell it like it is, even when like-it-is is horrific, and Banks brings them to life with energetic prose filled with pitch-perfect conversational storytelling. Of the four, Driscoll's characterization can feel somewhat uninspired, but only because the other three narrators are such utterly surprising survivors. The Sweet Hereafter shifts focus away from blame and onto what comes next, making it an original take on tragedy and, more important, the human will to carry on.