Foregone
By Russell Banks
Published 2021
Read Aug 2025
This reader took a break from Louise Penny this summer and read a book by an author that has been highly reliable for this reader to provide an interesting read.
Leonard Fife entered Canada from the US in 1968, presumably to avoid the draft. He became a documentary film maker and taught this subject at the graduate school level. His wife, Emma, was one of his students. She left her husband and children to be with him, and she has been with him as a producer for many years. Leonard is now quite ill and in hospice in his home. He has invited another of his students, Malcolm, to make a documentary film about him. The present day story line evolves over a few days of filming.
Malcolm is hoping Leonard will talk about the making of some of his great documentaries, but Leonard has other ideas. He doesn’t answer the questions Malcolm wants him to address. Rather, he focuses on telling his life story from the beginning. It’s not clear whether Leonard is going to make it more than a day. Each time there is a pause, his nurse requests he take a rest. Emma wants him to stop as well both because what he is saying isn’t pretty and because she too knows he needs to rest. She threatens to leave the room, but he insists she stay. He says he is telling the story for her. Leonard wants Emma to know his story. Maybe she doesn’t want to know his whole story, but Leonard doesn’t want to die without her knowing it.
Bank’s prose is unrelenting and we also at times wish Leonard would stop but we know he won’t, and we know Banks won’t let us and we are glad for that too.
MarshaReads.com 