The Sweet Hereafter By Russell Banks (A Review By Isaac Atayero)

The book is about the actual bus crash in Alston, Texas and almost everyone that was somehow involved in the accident ended up suing or was sued or even both.The book takes place in a small town in Upstate New York and how it dealt with bus accident that befell it. 

The book has different narrators and the reader is allowed to journey through the minds of the different narrators which gives them a confusing but oddly an even clearer view of the event. The narrators were Dolores Driscoll, the bus driver who drove the bus over the embankment, Billy Ansel, a widower who lost his twins in the accident and stands against suing knowing it will bring confusion and chaos to the town. Mitchell Stephens Esquire, a lawyer from the city who believes there are no such things as accidents and there is always someone to blame for not doing their job correctly but his plans fail when Nichole Burnell, a narrator and survivor of the accident decides to make a false testimony that served its purpose and ended all the lawsuits.
Although its a bit hazy who really is to blame at the end of the book, citizens of the town are led to believe that it was Dolores' fault for speeding on the highway due to Nichole's false witness. Nichole was convinced to create a plan to end the lawsuits by a conversation she overheard with Billy Ansel and her parents as Billy was convincing them to drop the suits.
The book, in all the many many plots that it is composed of, has one main theme which is that a community needs its children and that sometimes blame can be the biggest accident. Without children, houses become shops and homes become refurnished houses up for sale.
The book shows that some relationships, marriages, and even lives will not exsist or be nearly the same or fine without children that are involved. It shows how loss of children can let people self destruct or simply split from who they are, from their loved ones and from life.
The book has many other minor plots in ti and touches on other topics like child molestation,addiction, surviving war and of course surviving more than one loss. The style of which the book was written was so perfect and fitted for the story and how the reader was supposed to view each character that came along his or her way. My only critique for the book is that it is too short. I leaves you wanting closure for other individual stories and other answers for other questions not necessarily related to the main plot. The characters become more than characters and become people you would want to meet and minds you would want to read many sequels to.At the end of the novel i felt robbed of an experience and an opportunity to read more pages. I wanted to meet more characters and read more into the minds of the ones i have already read. he ending felt like a rushed ending that was disguised as a slow take-your-time ending. Great book over all and to a friend, i would recommend it and to the author, i would recommend a sequel!