I wanted to love this but I found it a bit hard to keep up with. Thank you netgalley & the publisher for the arc.

Reading Russell Bank's sublime The Magic Kingdom reminded me of listening to my grandfather share his stories of growing up at the turn of the century in a small mill town in upstate NY. His immigrant parents were strangers in a strange new land, arriving just in time for the Great Depression. His stories, shared on our porch every few nights, happily wandered a lot, and evocatively painted a painful portrait of the bleakness of the early ‘20s..

In The Magic Kingdom, Banks structures his novel around a series of tape recordings he found in a discard pile at a library. The tapes were recorded by 71 year old Harley Mann, who decided to record his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. A fascinating story it is! Following his father’s tragic death, Harley and his family move South into the Florida swampland and join a small, struggling community of Shakers. Banks moves his plot quickly through a maze of deceit, betrayals and a forbidden love affair, as his protagonist discovers the world outside the restrictive confines of the Shaker community, and his own need to make his (meaningful) place in the world. While Bank’s story is lengthy, the pace never relents. We watch the world change as time passes, and Florida’s swampland is developed and grows into farmland and ultimately Disneyland. An astute businessman, Mann buys and sells land (and then repossess and resells the land when the buyer defaults) and is soon immensely wealthy, yet alone.

Bank’s novel is completely enthralling and engaging on so many levels. It is a addictive story of a man’s life; an examination of the dreams and greed of Americans i the 20s and 30s; and one man’s search for contentment and meaning in a life which quickly expands beyond his reach. While Mann may wander away from the direct path of his narrative, his detours are always captivating, and enrich his main story. The Magic Kingdom is one of my favorite books of 2022. I am grateful to NetGalley and PenguinRandomHouse for providing an advance copy of the book in exchange for an objective review.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A work of historical fiction on the Shaker community of Central Florida.

I have read other Banks' book and enjoyed them. His use of language and description is high quality and his characters are usually captivating and engrossing. This one just did not grab my interest enough to keep me reading. A fictional (?) memoir of an elderly man who had recorded his life story on tape -- from the early part of the 20th century until the 1970s. The story is filled with detailed explanation of life within a utopian community and within a Shaker community in Florida. Those details were fascinating, but eventually I just became bored with the endless narrative. Much of it read like a primer on Shaker philosophy. I finally stopped reading about half-way. I know Banks' books have high emotional appeal, and this one is no different. I just found the reminiscences tedious at times and have far too many other books on my "to read" shelf to continue. I read other positive reviews, so clearly I'm missing something, but this one was just not my cup of tea.

This book is about the creation of Disney World and the land and history before the theme park. The book is audio transcriptions of a local man who lived on this land. He tells his history of moving to the New Bethany commune. I really really tried to read this and could not get through it. It was too difficult to get into or try to keep up with the extraneous details in the narrative.

Beginning with the Foreword to the magnificent tale Harley Mann shares in The Magic Kingdom, the reader will not stop absorbing this deep, heartfelt and tragic examination of a man tormented by an obsessive love and a religion which forbids it.

Harley Mann relates his story in reel-to-reel tapes, beginning with his young life and his absorption into the Shaker lifestyle in St. Cloud, Florida. He will come to love Sadie Pratt, a tuberculosis patient who makes frequent visits to the Shaker settlement. His love will take a devastating turn when Sadie dies and a court case results. Harley will have to weigh his loyalty to Sadie against Shaker beliefs.

There are no easy outcomes here; rather, the reader will completely understand all sides of the conflict that will lead to the dissolving of the settlement. Harley Mann will truly be the last Florida Shaker.

Based loosely on real events, author Russell Banks has breathed real life into a piece of Florida and Shaker history.

Find yourself a comfortable chair, preferably on a porch, have lemonade or iced tea handy and be prepared to be transported back to a time and place where struggling families banded together into small (sometimes religious) utopian communities. Some, like the Shakers became well known, others, like the ones experienced in "The Magic Kingdom" have long since disappeared but not without leaving behind a history of a time and place few today could imagine. Elderly Harley Mann lived his young life in poverty as his mother and siblings moved around the south. Now a solitary, retired property speculator (who sold most of the property upon which Disney World is now located), Harley spends his days recording his memories and watching an expanding sink hole appear in his driveway. He records his life as a child, a teen and a young man in love and the events that led him to his current lonely life. Readers can't help but be slowly drawn into Harley's life, always wondering when and if Harley's fortunes will change. Settle down and sit a spell while Harley's story un-spools like the recordings he has left as a legacy of what life was in the south Florida swamps and what it became.

I haven't read Russell Banks for awhile, and I almost forgot what a masterly novelist he is.

In the opening of “The Magic Kingdom,” Russell Banks discovers a pile of reel-to-reel tapes in the basement of a library in St. Cloud, Florida. He takes them home and they sit in a box for a decade or so before he gets the jones to listen to them. Is this Russell Banks the author, a stand-in, or just something he wished had happened? We don’t know.

The reels were recorded by a man named Harley Mann, a former land developer and, as we will find, much more. Through him we will learn about utopian communities that flourished in Florida in the early 20th century, particularly the Shakers.

Harley and his family were Ruskinites, a utopian socialist group who followed the teaching of British painter and social reformer John Ruskin. They came to a failing Ruskinite community in Waycross, Georgia from Indiana, but following his father’s death, his mother and four siblings became debt slaves on a plantation. His mother reaches out to her network of utopian societies and one day a tall, handsome man speaking in Quaker grammar pays their debt and takes the entire family to a flourishing Shaker community in Florida, near what will become a different Magic Kingdom.

Harley immerses us in the life of the society and the natural world around it, as more and more people come to live in this delicate ecology that was never meant to sustain such a large population. Elder John and Eldress Mary manage the colony with love, placing members in jobs for which they are both suited and interested. Harley becomes a beekeeper. He also becomes enamored of a young woman with tuberculosis whom the Shakers have taken under their wing. If you’re wondering how could work in a celibate community, Harley will clarify.
Harley as an old man tells in his own words what he did to his world, which he loved and which had become a home for his family. We learn a little about his career in land development—just enough. We’ll wonder why he is living in a shotgun house with an emergent sinkhole at the end of the driveway.
I found the “author discovered” aspect sort of intriguing, especially when it allows Banks to tie up the story at the other end. Unlike many novels using this device, Banks does not participate in Harley’s story—he lets the voice on the reels do that job. He admits to some editing, and I think he could have done some more. After finishing “Magic Kingdom” I would see how important every element of the transcription was but I wanted him to get to it a little faster.

I’m wondering if I should put quotations around words like “Banks” and “editing” since he has written himself into Harley’s confession. He’s a master writer who tells a story with clarity and can create believable voices for his characters. In this novel he presents us with a world that no longer exists in any form—not just the Shaker community but the mysterious and glorious natural world of Florida a century ago.

Thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for thus reading expperience!

In THE MAGIC KINGDOM, Russell Banks showcases his mastery of characterization and plot, delivering a rich, slow-boiling novel set in Florida pre-Disney, poignant, piercingly original, and haunting in its narrative voice. Highly recommended!

My thanks to Knopf and to Netgalley for the pleasure of the early read.

I live in Central Florida so this book some thing I could really relate to. Having author as accomplished as Russell Banks is it all the more easy. It was a great book filled with all kinds of insight on how Disney World and the Magic Kingdom came to be. Great characters great plot. Thank you for my advanced

The structure of this book was intriguing and had me captivated from the first page. There was always an aura of mystery and uncertainty that kept the reader engaged the entire time. This was a fantastic read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I loved this book. I didn't expect to. It started slow, built up, and never let go.
The book consists of fifteen or so reel-to-reel audio tapes that Harley Mann, a man in his 80s and expecting to die soon, has recorded about his life starting at 8 years old. After the death of his father, his mother takes him and his sisters and brothers to a place where they become indentured and only are able to leave when Elder John, a Shaker from the Florida everglades, what is now DisneyWorld, buys their freedom and takes them done to the Shaker world which later becomes Disney's Magic Kingdom.

Harley is a bright, observant, hard worker, and in love. The Shakers don't do sex so for a young man to be in love is trouble and it does lead to trouble.

Russel Banks is a favorite writer of mine. He draws you into a story like the pied piper whistling a tune and you don't know you are well along the path until you can't turn back. Elder John, Harley, Sadie Prate, Harley's family, and the fellows he works besides--there are many of them but we, the reader know them well as the story progresses. It is a family. A family that will fall apart as trouble looms and tragedy ensue.

As I said, I loved this book and highly recommend it.

I'm not sure what to think about Russell Banks' The Magic Kingdom. The book begins with a fictional set-up in how the book will be structured and how it was "found" -- something that reminded me of the opening of The Princess Bride by William Goldman (or is it S. Rosenberg? =) ). From there, we dive into the recordings of Harley Mann, a young boy who emerges from a Ruskinite community and moves, eventually, into a Shaker community.

Pros: I learned so much about the Shaker and the Ruskinite's through this book. Just loads and loads of information (especially about the former) was threaded throughout the story. I also really enjoyed thinking about the land before Disney emerged and what might have been existing there in terms of settler living.

Cons: Lots of dated language (because the narrator, himself, was of another time). It made me a bit uncomfortable several times, just because it's not normally something I'd want to read. The story, also, seemed to drag a bit and the end happen with a bang. There were a few reels that seemed repetitive and I had to skim a bit. There could definitely be some more editing with the book.

This book was not the genre which I usually read, but I found it to be quite an enjoyable read. Great writing style as well as character development keeps the reader interested and waiting for what happens next. This is a book which I would recommend to others.

Florida is a beautiful state that is being slowly destroyed by theme parks and thousands of cookie cutter housing developments. Banks explores Florida before the Mouse through his character, Harley Mann, a property speculator, who in 1971, (right before Disney made Florida his new playground) begins recording the history of his family. Settling in the then wilds of Central Florida, his family joined a group of Shakers, a religious sect that believes in faith, hard work, and no love, other that of God. But Harley finds himself falling in love with a young woman on the compound, something that is forbidden and begins to push back against the restrictive life forced upon him. A coming of age story about both a young man and a state, one looking for a way to reinvent himself, the other, forced into subjugation and destruction by humanity’s search for a playground