Hamilton Stark

Written by Russell Banks

Narrated by Sean Runnette

Hamilton Stark is a New Hampshire pipe fitter and the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother. He is the villain of five marriages and the father of a daughter so obsessed that she has been writing a book about him for years. Hamilton Stark is a boor, a misanthrope, a handsome man: funny, passionately honest, and a good dancer. The narrator, a middle-aged writer, decides to write about Stark as a hero whose anger and solitude represent passion and wisdom. At the same time that he tells Hamilton Stark's story, he describes the process of writing the novel and the complicated connections between truth and fiction. As Stark slips in and out of focus, maddeningly elusive and fascinatingly complex, this beguiling novel becomes at once a compelling meditation on identity and a thoroughly engaging story of life on the cold edge of New England.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Nov 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9780062311030

Russell Banks

Russell Banks, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was one of America’s most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and he received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He died in January 2023 at the age of eighty-two.  

[kristykay22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Russell Banks' 1978 novel Hamilton Stark, the reader is introduced to a drunken, brutish New Hampshire pipefitter who has been married and divorced five times, kicked his mother out of her own house, and loves to get into bar fights. Well, we don't exactly meet him since he has mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind a car with bullet-holes in the windshield and a locked up house, but we hear an awful lot about him from his biggest fan: our narrator.

Hoping to convince us of the philosophical purity of Stark's life, the narrator twists together interviews with Stark's ex-wives, his own experiences with Stark, long sections from a novel by Stark's daughter (with whom the narrator had a brief affair) based on her father's life, and his own lengthy discussions about Stark with his lonely neighbor. And of course the novel as a whole isn't even about Stark, it is actually about A., the man who the narrator worships for his uncompromising rejection of society and natural inclinations. And really, in the end, the book isn't even about A. Instead it is about our narrator.

This is Banks' first novel and he uses an experimental style that goes well with the story. Although the constant switching of tactics and retracing of steps is distancing, as a reader I didn't mind being held at arms length from this confused and untrustworthy narrator and his misogynistic hero. And although experimental, the novel is overall very engaging and follows a pretty straight narrative once you dig down into it.

[abirdman_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful portrait of a very unpleasant man. Banks' achievement is the ability to craft a story with such a protagonist, and portray him fairly and humanely.

[piefuchs · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Russell Banks first novel - which I believe is loosely based upon his father. For Russell Banks fans, this book is worthy reading as archeology, it does give you a sense of how he found his voice, particularly for his later NH works. If you are not a Russell Banks fan, don't start with his freshman effort, you may no be inticed to read much more.