Rating: 
Summary: Banks Never Disappoints
Review: I had never heard of Russel Banks until I picked up a copy of The Sweet Hearafter. Being from a small town in Northern, New York I immediately identified with the characters and the feeling that Banks is able to bring forth in his writing of small town life in depressed areas. I proceeded to read everthing he has ever written. I found myself learning something new in each of the books and invigorated by the diversity in his writing. Banks does not deliver in each of his short stories in this collection but who ever does. Many such as Plains of Abraham, Firewood, The Burden are touching, real, thoughful and to me anything but depressing. The relationship between father and son that Banks explores in many of the short stories I felt hit the mark. Banks short stories at their best make me more aware of myself and where I am from. I'm grateful Banks is doing what he is doing. This collection of short stories are reminders for me of what I left behind as well as what may lie ahead.
Rating: 
Summary: This book will grab you immediately.
Review: I'm not much of a reader, but after someone read me one of the short stories in this book, I had to get it. It's great. The plots are fascinating, the characters believable, and many of the stories will make your jaw drop. Each story left me wanting to read the one after it! I couldn't put this book down until I finished it.
Rating:
Summary: This book will grab you immediately.
Review: I'm not much of a reader, but after someone read me one of the short stories in this book, I had to get it. It's great. The plots are fascinating, the characters believable, and many of the stories will make your jaw drop. Each story left me wanting to read the one after it! I couldn't put this book down until I finished it.
Rating: 
Summary: overrated, but readable
Review: If there was a sense of humor, or even hope in Russell Banks' life, it must have been beaten out of him a long time ago, if these tales are any indication. There is a perverse yearning glamor to be found in these stories about the hard, bitter truths the characters find, or don't, almost as if the hopelessness is something to be envied. Cheever, it can be said, is often times dour and meloncholic, but at least lightens the load with transcendant prose , and a dark wit. Banks lacks even that, and this succession of dark skies, long winters, and teeth-grinding pain bearing just wears out: the writing, dare we say, even veers towards the cliche.A better written and more incisively written set of stories are needed in place of this.
Rating:
Summary: Genius of short stories
Review: Russell Banks is known primarily as a novelist, but his collected short stories show him to be a master of the shorter form as well. Some of these stories--like "Success Story" and "Fisherman" are masterpieces--the latter having affinities with Mark Twain's "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." Banks is at his best when he writes about New England working class people who live in trailer parks, drink lots of booze, and whose lives are bounded and limited by solitude and lonliness. This collection follows in the realistic tradition of Ray Carver's "Where I'm Calling From." Both writers present us with a disctinctly male view of the world, and they have great feeling and empathy for their characters.
Rating:
Summary: The heir to Raymond Carver
Review: Russell Banks is known primarily as a novelist, but his collected short stories show him to be a master of the shorter form as well. Some of these stories--like "Success Story" and "Fisherman" are masterpieces--the latter having affinities with Mark Twain's "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." Banks is at his best when he writes about New England working class people who live in trailer parks, drink lots of booze, and whose lives are bounded and limited by solitude and lonliness. This collection follows in the realistic tradition of Ray Carver's "Where I'm Calling From." Both writers present us with a disctinctly male view of the world, and they have great feeling and empathy for their characters.
Rating:
Summary: A Memorable Collection
Review: Russell Banks knows how to tell a story. He can vary his technique from intimate to grand scale and can interchange voices so you're never sure whether he is writing autobiography or pure fiction. In ANGEL ON THE ROOF he gives us stories that span a long period of his output and while each of the stories stands on its own (at times even in a short 5 or 6 pages)there is enough linkage or afterthoughts that somehow tie this collection together. Yes, the stories are intensely interesting individually and do continue to show Banks' feelings about the alienation and abuse of parent-child relationships, and people in general, and yes they can be read individually as a bedside book for finding somnolence. But to stop reading these collected stories as a book would rob the reader of the tangents that make for enhancing the experince as a novel. For sheer clarity of line, pungent descriptions of the quality of air/space/cold/skies etc Banks is as good as contemporary writers get. This is a richly rewarding book on so many levels that it clearly belongs in every library...with frequent easy access!
Rating:
Summary: A Memorable Collection
Review: Russell Banks knows how to tell a story. He can vary his technique from intimate to grand scale and can interchange voices so you're never sure whether he is writing autobiography or pure fiction. In ANGEL ON THE ROOF he gives us stories that span a long period of his output and while each of the stories stands on its own (at times even in a short 5 or 6 pages)there is enough linkage or afterthoughts that somehow tie this collection together. Yes, the stories are intensely interesting individually and do continue to show Banks' feelings about the alienation and abuse of parent-child relationships, and people in general, and yes they can be read individually as a bedside book for finding somnolence. But to stop reading these collected stories as a book would rob the reader of the tangents that make for enhancing the experince as a novel. For sheer clarity of line, pungent descriptions of the quality of air/space/cold/skies etc Banks is as good as contemporary writers get. This is a richly rewarding book on so many levels that it clearly belongs in every library...with frequent easy access!
Rating:
Summary: snow and sunshine
Review: Russell Banks' short stories (as well as his novels) have a vivacity created at least in part by his willingness and ability to shift his mindset in a way that can only be described as brilliantly bi-polar. He can recreate tropical landscapes and moods, but his native New England is depicted as a disturbingly poetic tundra with equal skill. Russell Banks' novels and short stories are a treasure for American literature. It's nice to finally see his brutally honest work receive the attention it has long deserved.
Rating: 
Summary: Lacks the strength of his longer work
Review: Some of the stories in Angel on the Roof are clever snapshots and therefore compelling. All all are thoughtful and well written. However, this book failed to engross me like Banks' other works. As a fan of Banks' novels, this book to me was interesting and useful as an insight into his writing. The reader will find characters and situations that pop up in Banks' longer fiction. Another interesting element is that some of the characters pop up in multiple stories - sometimes as principles and sometimes as background figures. This gives the book an interesting sense of continuity. However, Banks' prose is much more effective in the form of a novel, in which he has a bit more space to develop the characters. Banks in my opinion is the very opposite of Hemingway, who's short work was lauded but has been criticized for unfocused novels. Banks' novels never ramble, not even the 700+ page novel Cloudsplitter - but his short stories, while interesting, are definitely weaker than his longer works. Don't expect to find any memorable gems here; none of the stories made an impression on me. I'll go to my grave remembering Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" but I've already forgotten almost all of the stories in Angel on the Roof. Granted, Hemingway is a tough measuring stick, but Banks as one of the finest American authors merits tough comparisons. Well written but forgettable. However, true Banks fans will find Angel on the Roof worth the read simply for an insight into the author.
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