SOURCE: Hill, Lawrence. “Gory, Gory, Hallelujah.” Maclean's 111, no. 15 (13 April 1998): 64.

In the following review, Hill offers a mixed assessment of Cloudsplitter but concludes that it is a “profoundly moving novel.”

American literary giant William Faulkner wrote his celebrated short story “Barn Burning” from the point of view of a boy. The tale's brilliance emerged not so much in the details of the man who dealt his enemies horrid strokes of violence, but in the way Faulkner presented the villain through the eyes of his young son. In Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks's epic about the life of John Brown—a white man who became the most violent and uncompromising anti-slavery advocate in U.S. history—the novelist has also chosen to tell the story from the vantage point of the main character's son, Owen. That strategy brings the reader within intimate reach of John Brown—close enough to underline, as only...