It has been YEARS since Alexie has published a novel. I've really enjoyed all of his work, although Indian Killer was at the bottom of that list. Now this little book grabbed me hard before I even opened it. It has that weird uneven cut to the page edges that I like, and the covers have fold-backs that you can use as bookmarks. (Yes, the book is that thin.)
Oh, the story, you want to know. What about the story?
That really took hold of me, young half-Indian teen called Zits by everyone, for the obvious reason. It begins with him on the first day in, like, his twentieth foster home since his mother died. (Father deserted them the day Zits was born.) Soon the story loses it punch for me, perhaps because I am confused by what is happening in a scene in a bank. I lose heart.
Then wham. What the heck, this truly is a time-travel/body-snatching story as this kid ends up in various bodies, witnessing, coming to know, both sides of the story. From Little Bighorn and the massacre of whites, to an attack on an Indian village that may or may not have been the people who massacred a white settlement. We suffer experiencing the horror, shame, and understanding along with him. An especially poignant vignette is when he finds himself in the body of this homeless drunk...we can quickly figure out who that one is... Then back to that bank scene, as himself again, but told very differently than in the beginning.
I was surprised at what seems like a pat, all's-well-that-ends-well ending. But you know, this book needed that ending. After all, though written for adults, it is a fairy tale.
That last line...it just warms your heart and makes you glad he wrote this book.
Oh, the story, you want to know. What about the story?
That really took hold of me, young half-Indian teen called Zits by everyone, for the obvious reason. It begins with him on the first day in, like, his twentieth foster home since his mother died. (Father deserted them the day Zits was born.) Soon the story loses it punch for me, perhaps because I am confused by what is happening in a scene in a bank. I lose heart.
Then wham. What the heck, this truly is a time-travel/body-snatching story as this kid ends up in various bodies, witnessing, coming to know, both sides of the story. From Little Bighorn and the massacre of whites, to an attack on an Indian village that may or may not have been the people who massacred a white settlement. We suffer experiencing the horror, shame, and understanding along with him. An especially poignant vignette is when he finds himself in the body of this homeless drunk...we can quickly figure out who that one is... Then back to that bank scene, as himself again, but told very differently than in the beginning.
I was surprised at what seems like a pat, all's-well-that-ends-well ending. But you know, this book needed that ending. After all, though written for adults, it is a fairy tale.
That last line...it just warms your heart and makes you glad he wrote this book.
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