The Magic Kingdom: A novel

Russell Banks’s latest novel The Magic Kingdom begins with a conceit that fascinates me: the foreword suggests the author found a box of tapes that feature the recordings of Harley Mann, a “semiretired speculator in Florida real estate.” It smacks of “The Custom House”, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s introduction to The Scarlet Letter, and it sets up a brilliant push and pull between what Banks is responsible for and what was, simply, on the tapes he found. I took the conceit to be a falsehood constructed to give the novel flavor and read it that way.

Harley Mann recounts his life with honesty and small digressions from the past to the present that is attributable to the age of the character–he is noted to be in his early eighties. His voice is clear and specific, and when he notes the travel of his mother and siblings after his father has died, to a plantation in Georgia, the ache and desperation of their situation are clear. His mother’s decision to travel to New Bethany, a Shaker community in Florida, sets the bulk of the book in motion and gives Harley’s family stability, and faith, where they had had none. Harley works closely with Elder John at New Bethany and finds the lifestyle suits him even if he does not feel the faith as deeply as some others may.

The title of the novel and its setting in Florida may draw assumptions that the world of Disney is a focal point, but it isn’t., Harley’s attraction to a young girl in a tuberculosis clinic, and the request she makes of him as her death is imminent, shapes the heartbreak and crisis of faith that defines the book. New Bethany did exist and was absorbed by Disney when the Shakers left that part of Florida, but the kingdom Banks seems to create here is the one we all live in during our youth–when we are confronted with the choices we have to make that will define whom we become. Fans of Matt Bondurant’s Oleander City, and those invested in a strong character-driven drama, will love The Magic Kingdom.