Tommy Orange

So good. There were a lot of characters to keep track with and I didn’t always succeed, but the story is powerfully beautiful and sad. The pacing of the novel is excellent, starts at a normal pace but by the end I tore through it. Some of the opening quotes were devastating. “In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times” Bertold Brecht and “what strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is still about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters” Charles Baudelaire. Quite a remarkable book.… (more)

All the Indian children who were ever Indian children never stopped being Indian children, and went on to have not nits but Indian children, whose Indian children went on to have Indian children, whose Indian children became American Indians, whose American Indian children became Native Americans, whose Native American children would call themselves Natives, or Indigenous, or NDNS, or the names of their sovereign nations, or the names of their tribes, and all too often would be told they weren’t the right kind of Indians to be considered real ones by too many Americans taught in schools their whole lives that the only real kinds of Indians were those long-gone Thanksgiving Indians who loved the Pilgrims as if to death.

Honestly, one of the best books I have ever read. I worried Orange could not match the brilliance of There There. It turns out he topped that book. This is being billed as a sequel to There There, but mostly it is not exactly that. Parts are both sequel and prequel to the last book. There there had such a clear plot, but this, not so much. This is a bigger picture look at how Indgenous Americans started and got to where they are now than it is any sort of There There series book.

Certainly a lot of the specific events are set in motion by the events of the Powwow in There There, but also it becomes clear that event is part of a chain of events, really indistinguishable from a chain of events that have been happening since Europeans landed on American shores. The nonlinearity of this book is one of its strengths, much of this is manic and uncomfortable, and that feels right. This approach to illustrating the abnegation and extermination of Indigenous American culture, and also, of course, of Indigenous Americans should not be linear, and it certainly should not be comfortable. I was surprised to find it had a bittersweet but hopeful ending. Every living thing needs to adapt to survive, but as long as we don't allow that adaptation to disappear us there is hope for survival. This is a a book about survivors, who hold on to their essence against all odds. but who also lose many very important connections to things and people no matter how hard they fight.

I read a lot so some books, even ones I enjoy a great deal, are mostly forgotten. That is okay. Forgetting plots or characters does not mean I did not retain things of value from those reads. But though that forgetting does not bother me, reading a book like this that I know will stay with me, likely forever, is an experience beyond those others, and is truly a privilege.

I listened to the audiobook but also got the Kindle so I could go back and read sections. That worked well for me. This was read by several narrators, and I thought all but one were very good, and even that one was adequate. The language here though is so often perfect and utterly unexpected that I wanted to spend more time with it than audiobooks allow. If you are a fan of great prose make sure to read this in print, or at least do as I did and give yourself access to the print version even if you listen to most of this.… (more)