With wrenching pain and wry humor, the talented Alexie, a
Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian - and previously a small-press author
(The Business of Fancydancing, a collection of poetry and prose -
not reviewed - etc.) - presents contemporary life on the Spokane
Indian Reservation through 22 linked stories. Here, people treat
each other (and life) with amused tolerance - although anger can
easily erupt in this environment of endemic alcoholism and despair.
The history of defeat is ever-present; every attempt to hold onto
cultural tradition aches with poignancy: Thomas-Builds-the-Fire is
the storyteller everyone mocks and no one listens to; Aunt Nezzy,
who sews a traditional full-length beaded dress that turns out to
be too heavy to wear, believes that the woman "who can carry the
weight of this dress on her back...will save us all." Meanwhile,
young men dream of escape - going to college, being a basketball
star - but failure seems preordained. These tales, though sad and
at times plain-spokenly didactic, are often lyrically beautiful and
almost always very funny. Chapters focus on and are narrated by
several different characters, but voices and perspectives often
become somewhat indistinguishable - confusing until you stop
worrying about who is speaking and choose to listen to the voice of
the book itself and enter into its particular sensibility. Irony,
grim humor, and forgiveness help characters transcend pain, anger
and loss while the same qualities make it possible to read Alexie's
fiction without succumbing to hopelessness. Forgiveness seems to be
the last moral/ethical value left standing: the ability both to
judge and to love gives the book its searing yet affectionate
honesty. (Kirkus Reviews)
Ball games, cars, and romances: the icons and battlefields of
modern life. In twenty-two linked stories, with infinite humour and
pathos, Sherman Alexie explores some of the major issues of our
time: the pull between the urban and the rural, the future and the
past; the trials and tribulations of young adulthood; the comlex
density of daily life. A modern mythmaker with a sharp eye for
irony, Sherman Alexie's focus is an American Indian reservation,
but his playground is the world.
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