SOURCE: Binding, Paul. “Trailerpark Lives.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5085 (15 September 2000): 22.

In the following review, Binding praises Banks's insight and sense of mercy in the stories collected in The Angel on the Roof, comparing Banks to Raymond Carver.

“It's true of trailerparks”, observes Russell Banks in his long short story, “The Fisherman”, “that the people who live there are generally alone at the centre of their lives.” Trailers, which vary in size, shape, condition and quality, have this in common: they are only superficially grounded, they rest on the land without the foundations necessary for the more bourgeois buildings of town or suburb. Similarly their occupants, though they may remain in their trailers, indeed in the same park, for many years, never quite form, or even add up to, a community—however cognisant they are of one another's doings, whatever the friendships or enmities that develop between them. Their...