SOURCE: Danziger, Jeff. “Small Town Tragedy.” Christian Science Monitor (24 September 1991): 15.

In the following review, Danziger compliments the philosophical depth of The Sweet Hereafter and notes that Banks's fiction is improving which each subsequent work.

Russell Banks's third major novel [The Sweet Hereafter], after Continental Drift and Affliction, is a work of wonderful tenderness and strength, told with his unique skill of keeping a fundamental philosophic question just below the surface of everyday events. Given the declining quality of American novels, Banks could be at the top by remaining the same. Instead, he improves.

The story is told by four people: Dolores Driscoll, a school-bus driver in a small town; Billy Ansel, father of two of the children on the bus; Mitchell Stephens, a lawyer; and Nichole Burnell, a student. In the accident on which the story is centered, Ansel loses his children and Nichole is paralyzed. Dolores survives...