THE SWEET HEREAFTER

一辆校车坠河，几个家庭的命运就此碎裂。但这本书真正锋利之处，不在灾难本身，而在灾难之后：当无辜的孩子死去，幸存的父母该向谁挥拳？是司机、是学校，还是命运？作者让四个互不相让的声音轮番开口，把一座小镇逼进自我撕裂的漩涡——密集的人际关系在这里不是温情，反而成了相互绞杀的利刃。它不给出廉价的宽恕，也不提供清晰的罪人，而是逼你直视那句"there is no such thing as the simple truth"。适合愿意忍受缓慢铺垫、渴望在道德灰暗中辨认人性复杂的人；若你寻求爽利的真相与救赎，这里只会让你失望。

Russell Banks was a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He has written fiction, and more recently, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main works include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction. The latter two novels were each made into feature films in 1997.