Foregone

A Novel

By: Russell Banks

Narrated by: Stephen Mendel

The basis for the Major Motion Picture Oh, Canada directed by Paul Schrader and starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Jacob Elordi, and Michael Imperioli.

A searing novel about memory, abandonment, and betrayal from the acclaimed and bestselling Russell Banks

""During a career stretching almost half a century, Russell Banks has published an extraordinary collection of brave, morally imperative novels. . . . In this complex and powerful novel, we come face to face with the excruciating allure of redemption."" —Washington Post

At the center of Foregone is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife’s wife and alongside Malcolm’s producer, cinematographer, and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.

Imaginatively structured around Fife’s secret memories and alternating between the experiences of the characters who are filming his confession, the novel challenges our assumptions and understanding about a significant lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory itself. Russell Banks gives us a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man’s mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past.

Wonderful

There are many great things to say about this book but just to mention a couple: the descriptions of setting are so well written it is like listening to a virtuoso playing a show piece. Also, the descriptions and discussion of the psychologies of the characters are brilliantly insightful and thought provoking.

Failed to Hold

I plowed ahead hopeful that the engaging stories would add up to more. In the end, it seemed to have ambitions for profundity, but just felt sad and deflated.

Did not like this one

I love some of his books, and this started out great, but then dragged and dragged.