For the title of this review, I also considered "Wuthering Lows." Indeed, Affliction seems like it could be a companion piece to that novel in many ways. One is English, and the other American. One was written by a woman, and the other by a man. Both tackle thorny subjects, in particular intergenerational abuse that is bottled up and stored to ferment until it explodes, cascading downwards. And they are both rather chilly, though Affliction affords less counterpoint to that chilliness than Wuthering Heights does.
I was first introduced to this novel through Paul Schrader's film adaptation, which is both a faithful rendition of the story and strong in its own right. Schrader has said that he feels the film is a collaboration between him and Banks - it's worth nothing that Schrader also adapted Banks' novel Foregone into a film titled Oh, Canada a few years ago - and one's sensibilities fit right into the other's. The novel's narration is adapted into a voiceover by Willem Dafoe that sounds like quintessential Schrader; the unremitting bleakness and psychological torment read the same way. Also, Nick Nolte is god-tier and in a just world would have earned an Oscar instead of fucking ROBERTO BENIGNI. It's one of my favorite screen performances of all time.
The film is so faithful, in fact, that you can probably get away with just watching that instead of reading the novel. I've only felt this way about an adaptation a handful of times in my life, the Coens' and Jenkins' being two other other notable examples. Yet I admired the novel in its own right and found it worthwhile, though I was frustrated with Banks' slow pacing and sadistic tendency to halt the narrative for a five-page description of a mountain. (Both qualities were also inherent to the other Banks novel I've read, , which I almost wholly disliked.) Reading it may not have been a revelatory experience, but it brought me deeper appreciation for the story.
