"The Light of A Bright Sun" by Thurman P. Banks, Jr. : My Review

Every now and then you get the distinct and renowned pleasure of reading a book that changes everything you think you know.  A book that makes you view the world in a whole new way because it shakes your very foundation, and that book is “The Light of A Bright Sun” by Thurman P. Banks Jr. 

(This review is based on my reading a pre-production copy of the book) This is Banks second foray into the literary world and Banks has risen to new and glorious heights with this masterpiece that you will not be able to put down.  Banks is the unknown author whose name should be on all of of our lips.  He simply is that good!

            The narrative text begins in present day, but a good portion of the book is also set in the past.  First July 27^th, 1976 a date which changes the entire course of one story, August 1986—which is where a good bulk of the story is told, February 1987, and April 1987—which is where the remaining fair portion of the story is told.  The timelines are well thought out, well constructed and we flip-flop between the present and past very easily.  The reader is left with no questions unanswered and no way of not knowing exactly when and where we are.  The literary narrative could not have been told without this changing of timeframes, and in this case is one of many strong points to which Banks has brilliantly achieved.

            The first four pages of the text we are set in present in day, in what we are lead to believe is a hospital room with someone connected to a heart monitor.  Characters within the first four pages are not given any names and this type of narrative is vividly played out until the final chapter when these characters are revealed.  This theme of mystery is cleverly and wonderfully sets into motion a stage of intrigue that commands you to continue to turn the pages.  It is this aspect alone that kept this reader guessing at these characters identities until the very end when this reader was pleasantly surprised at the outcome.  One quote from this book I believe sets the entire stage to which this masterful text is set:

“I’ve slipped into madness again, he thinks, laughing lightly.  So be it if I am in the middle of madness, he assures himself, you have to be a little crazy to truly stay sane in this world anyhow” (Banks Jr. 2).

Set in the “coastal Connecticut town of Hayward” (Banks Jr. 5) the story really begins July 27^th, 1976 with the main character Thomas Thompson, not Tommy but Thomas, an eight year-old boy that Banks calls a “hero without a cape—living a life of created greatness in an unhurried world and overachieving mind” (Banks Jr. 5).  Thomas after a game of baseball makes the simple decision to walk home rather than ride his bike.  This simple decision sets us into “Fifteen unwanted minutes (that) can change a life however, and not always for the best” (Banks Jr. 6).  For it is in walking home that Thomas is brutally raped by two teenage boys, who happen to be the residents of Laro School. 

“Only tears and terror remained as he whispered in shock to the wind, “I’m a boy.  I’m a boy” (Banks Jr. 10)…. They left him there, naked and betrayed by his own purity…let God be the raped child if he so allows his children to be treated that way, and then maybe we’ll see where his faith resides” (Banks Jr. 11)

            This violent act sets into motion a narrative within the text that makes Beverly Weston of the “August: Osage County” fame and her story look like June Cleaver and “Leave it To Beaver”.  This best can be seen within the text when Banks writes:

“Madness—that is what our lives truly are—a bundle of thoughts and lies, which like strings, we know are destined to break, yet we still continue to hang ourselves upon” (Banks Jr. 15).

            What sets the narrative apart from stories similar to “August: Osage County” is Banks incredible skill at telling stories that are both brutal and moving, horrible yet inspirational and painful truths in which we grow and grow beyond our wildest imaginations.  Banks has us “One minute spent kneeling in glory, the next for a lifetime of pain” (Banks Jr. 16) which is what Prudence Cecilia Main or better known as Prudie and or Mumma does; and especially after her husband, Joseph, abandons her and Thomas.

Prudie is twenty-seven years old when this event happens and sends Prudie into a tailspin of religion and possible mental instability.  But Banks in a moment of true clarity says, “If prayer truly worked, would there really be any need to keep praying” (Banks Jr. 42). This theme of religion versus faith and childlike believe are “toyed’ with by Banks in ways that are new, challenging and creatively dealt with in a fashion that this reader has not seen before.  All aspects of the ideas of religion, faith, belief, trust, hope and forgiveness are exquisitely dealt with and we the reader walk away not only where these characters stand in these issues; but we, I believe, are also given insight into what Banks knows to be true. 

Time passes, as it must, and Prudie meets and ends up marrying a man she met in a bar named William Theodore Crowley or better known as Willy. Banks describes Willy as:

“A regular predator (womanizer)—the tall and handsome handful as he had been dubbed by the barflies (Banks Jr. 18)… the lazy dreamer, so uncoordinated he would trip over his own feet (Banks Jr. 20).

Willy is an alcoholic and has a tendency to cruelty.  This cruelty that is played out throughout the two hundred fifty nine-page text and, the height of this can be seen when Willy gives Thomas a cross-hook that ends up in eight stitches. But it is Thomas who has a “fear of the known and unknown…a worry of the world that would forever hang on his shoulders” (Banks Jr. 49)

Willy and Prudie are destined for a life of hardships and not merely for the fact that Prudie is pregnant. Willy is hopeful it will be a boy, but fate deals a cruel hand when Maybeline is born.  Not only is Maybeline, nicknamed Maybe, is a girl but she has Down Syndrome.  This simple act of birth causes Willy to despise life and fate even more; for what kind of God would cause such things to happen. However, it is Maybe that teaches Thomas and us the reader:

“That life is nothing more than a mirror, and what we see in others, is often no more than a reflection of ourselves.  But even a person with sight can be blind” (Banks Jr. 49).

It is the character of Maybe that brings--- this incredible story of struggle, pain, loss and grief ---some form of hope.  It is in Maybe’s “disability” that hope, faith and ultimately triumph emerges.  Even when Pastor Carr, Mumma’s minister violently rapes Maybe when she is ten years old, Maybe rises above the violence, the horror and the pain in a singular act of true forgiveness, that left this reader crying and struggling still some twenty-seven years later to emotionally forgive his rapist.

Pastor Carr has a daughter Mary Sue who is also a pivotal player, even though she is a bit of a slut in the beginning of the story.  But even our first notions of Mary Sue are skewed when we learn that Mary Sue has been the victim of incest at the hands of her own father. This theme of sexual abuse and assault is a reoccurring one within the text and Banks, in my opinion, has a true and deep understanding of this issue that many authors do not.  It is when Thomas is eighteen or nineteen years old that she has a sexual dalliance with Thomas even though she is engaged to Roger Burdick who is in the military.

 There is another mystery to the real father of Mary Sue’s child, and why I do not want to give away to much of this storyline—as it is one of Banks strongest and most moving storylines—I will say I was surprised at the outcome because Banks draws such a believable story to which we belief as “gospel”.

There are moments of extreme violence in this book but Banks does not go into theatrics or gore for gores sake within what he has written.  There is an ease and simplistic beauty to even though most violent of scenes and a metaphysical growth that comes from this story of deep pain and forgiveness.  

By the end when Banks has so entrenched us into his masterful story that we reading faster than we thought imagined—simply so we can read the text, to get to the next part of the story--- we are drawn into the most painful and beautifully written story I have ever read.  It has an ease of moments that are much like Nicholas Sparks “The Notebook”, it has a touch of “Philadelphia” and a smattering of “Precious”; but make no mistake this book is none of those things and yet we are reminded of a more tender, compassionate time that by the last page left me weeping.

            
Banks is a literary force to be reckoned with, and with a teaser of his next novel “Between the Heavens” at the end of this one--- I predict a glorious future for this “new” writer.  A future that has me running to buy this book or any other he happens to pen.  Thank you Thurman for an incredible journey with characters who have become family:

“Most of us slither away from the light by way of machine or man, in senility rather than divinity, never to resurrect ourselves, as if unable to climb up the mountain.  We fade away in the depth of our souls, here one moment, gone the next.  How tragic.  How beautiful. How human” (Banks Jr. 252).

This is one book everyone should write.  Banks has risen above and beyond his first book “Beyond John Dunn” which was spectacular as well, but this, if possible is even better.  Run out today and buy your copy!