UPDATE June 24, 2021: 750 more suspected unmarked graves found near another former Indian residential school (this one in Saskatchewan)*
A disturbing, UPDATE June 24, 2021: 750 more suspected unmarked graves found near another former Indian residential school (this one in Saskatchewan)*
A disturbing, revelatory look at survivors of Canada’s residential school system
Canada is still reeling from the recent discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children* who attended a residential school in Kamloops, B.C. That tragedy – which has prompted investigations into other such schools across the country – only hammers home the importance of Michelle Good’s prescient and powerful first novel.
It follows the lives of five “survivors” of the Catholic-run Mission school in B.C. I put quotation marks around that word because although these Indigenous children were alive they were irrevocably scarred by the emotional, physical and sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of priests and nuns. They were also cut off from their families and traditions, and so have been largely left without any personal and cultural history.
• Kenny’s frequent attempts at escaping the Mission have followed him out into the real world, where he flees any sort of normal life or stability.
• Lucy is a naive girl who’s dispatched from the school at 16 and forced to fend for herself without knowing anything about the outside world. She pursues an education as a nurse, and finds meaning in motherhood, even though she's developed some obsessive-compulsive behaviours.
• Maisie, who takes Lucy in when she comes to Vancouver, is tough and knowing on the surface but leads a self-destructive double life.
• Clara becomes active in the American Indian movement and has built a protective wall around her.
• And finally Howie, probably the most brutally victimized of the lot, has been paying for an impulsive act of vengeance that landed him in jail after leaving the Mission.
Good, who trained later in life as a lawyer and advocated on behalf of many residential-school survivors, focuses not on what happens in the school itself but on what the residents do afterwards. She’s especially skillful in depicting the emotional trauma affecting them. Some are haunted by kids who didn’t survive, feeling guilt because their friends are dead. Some feel worthless and unmoored, which is how they were made to feel during their stolen childhoods.
And while seeing each other brings solace (only other survivors can understand what they’ve been through), it can also plunge them back into a time they’d rather forget and move on from.
If the novel has a major flaw, it’s that the priests and nuns at the school are cardboard villains, pure evil. I know we're seeing them from the POV of the abused children, but I wish Good had given them a bit more complexity. And the timeline of the childhood scenes is sometimes unclear. (view spoiler)[I don't understand how Kenny told Howie how to escape if he himself escaped on the day he thought Howie was killed (hide spoiler)]. A stronger editor could have cut out some clichés.
The first two or three chapters were unrelenting in their bleakness, and for a while I considered abandoning the novel. (One or two of my Goodreads friends did just that.) I’m glad I stuck with the book, however. Good mixed up the tone of the book, introducing a few other key characters – including a vivacious, life-affirming dog named after one of the 20th century’s most important musicians. And she showed us the way to reconciliation and healing.
Five Little Indians is an important and necessary book, deserving of all the acclaim it’s received....more
I feel guilty criticizing Tommy Orange's first novel, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and made several best-of lists when it was published in 2018. I feel guilty criticizing Tommy Orange's first novel, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and made several best-of lists when it was published in 2018. Some of my most trusted Goodreads friends adored it, and I can partly see why.
Orange is a gifted writer. I especially liked the book's prologue, in which he chronicles America's genocide of its Indigenous peoples and then explores some of the myths and truths about Native American lives in the subsequent centuries. He prepares us to think about the sense of dislocation and loss hinted at in the title, which comes (as a character will tell us later on) from Gertrude Stein.
The novel proper, however, features way too many points of view. (I especially didn't see the purpose of being introduced, 2/3 of the way in, to a character named Thomas Frank.) It takes a long time for the connections between and among them to become clear. And even then, you may wonder, "Who is this again?" before flipping back to the Cast of Characters at the beginning. Not a good sign.
What's more, often the novel's chronology is confusing. We meet one character when she's about eight, and a few chapters later she's... a grandmother? I think listing the year in which a character is narrating a chapter may have helped to orient us (it's something Louise Erdrich, who gets a lovely shoutout in the book, has done before).
Some of the POV techniques – one person narrates his section in the second person – feel like writing class exercises. And the book's big climax, set at an Oakland powwow, is rather clumsily done. (To be fair, Orange sets up a cross-cutting finale that would defeat even the most experienced novelist.) I longed for a powerful denouement, a scene that tied everything, and perhaps everyone, together. Instead, we got a faux lyrical vignette from a character we had pretty much forgotten about.
That said, I enjoyed lots about this book, particularly the way its urban characters often questioned their Indigenous identities. Orange has a soft spot for underdogs, like Tony, who was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and Orville, a young man who secretly studies Native dancing on YouTube. I wanted more about the bond between half-sisters Opal and Jacquie. Jacquie, an alcoholic, emerges as the book's most poignant character as she slowly learns to move on from the tragedies of her past. A sequence in which she's struggling not to drink from her hotel room minibar is staggering.
So, I have mixed thoughts about the book. But I'm glad I read it. And I'm very curious to see what Orange does next....more
In the opening pages of Louise Erdrich’s unforgettable new novel, Death + Depression + Drugs + Revenge + Rebirth + Renewal = Spellbinding Storytelling
In the opening pages of Louise Erdrich’s unforgettable new novel, Landreaux Iron is hunting a buck in the North Dakota forest. When he shoots, he discovers, to his horror, that he’s killed his neighbour’s five-year-old son, Dusty.
What happens then is remarkable. Landreaux and his wife Emmaline, following an old Ojibwe tradition, decide to give their own son, LaRose (who’s the same age as Dusty), to the boy’s grief-stricken parents, Pete and Nola, to raise as their own.
This changes the lives of everyone involved. LaRose, of course, is yanked out of one environment (complete with loving siblings) and transplanted into another (which comes with a nasty sister, Maggie). Landreaux, an alcoholic, must deal with his feelings of guilt. And Nola, Emmaline’s embittered half-sister, spirals further into bitterness and depression.
Meanwhile, Romeo, a figure from Landreaux’s childhood who’s always loved Emmaline, uses the event to concoct a Machiavellian revenge scheme.
As if this weren’t complex enough, Erdrich goes back 160 years and interweaves the stories of OTHER ancestral LaRoses, mostly female figures who have healing and restorative powers.
Erdrich takes her time in setting up the scenes, characters and time periods. The result is a fascinating patchwork quilt of a novel, whose pattern is only obvious when you pull away and see how beautifully it’s been constructed.
But unlike many of her other books, Erdrich doesn’t always make it easy by providing a character/narrator’s name and time period at the start of each chapter.
Don’t know who a character is? Read on; he or she will probably pop up in another 50 pages. It helps that the prose is so incredible. It’s lyrical (Erdrich is also a poet) but never pretty for its own sake, never showy. It’s direct, tough, and confident enough to mix myth and everyday pop culture references.
I think above all it’s the voices of Erdrich’s characters that are so impressive. She has a way of getting inside her people’s skins, showing you their grievances, what makes them laugh, their deep-rooted pain and their all-too-human foibles. But she never judges. They’re all part of the panorama of humanity. (Even The Wizard Of Oz author Frank L. Baum comes under scrutiny for some appallingly racist comments he once wrote.)
Before reading this book, I never thought I’d be interested in entering the mind of a scrawny, brilliant near-psychopath who siphons gas out of cars, steals medication from seniors (oh but he gets his comeuppance during one scene!) and has a thing for Condaleeza Rice. Nor did I understand the effects of a parent’s depression on children until this book. And did Erdrich really get my heart pounding reading about a girls’ volleyball game? You betcha.
She also created one recurring comic/horrific image that is too unbelievable and awesome to spoil. But you'll know it when you see it.
Not everything works, mind you. The middle section is a little baggy and wanders narratively. The idea of multiple LaRoses never pays off in a way I think she intends. And not all the characters are as compelling as Romeo, that scrawny, Iago-like villain, and Maggie, Nola’s disturbed but fierce and brilliant daughter.
But I have to say I loved spending time in Erdrich’s world. There’s something comforting about it. In the same way that all-knowing spirits and ghosts often enter a scene, she is there to show us life in all its gorgeous, haunting and enduring pain and beauty.
Wounds and death are inevitable; but forgiveness and healing (and maybe a bit of earthy humour) are always preferable to anger and revenge. Not a bad takeaway.
*** If Goodreads offered half-stars, I'd rate this as a 4.5. But it definitely makes me want to go back and read more Erdrich. I agree with Robbie (Snotchocheez) who says this could win the Pulitzer Prize. I'd go further and say that Erdrich could, in time, win the Nobel Prize. Like Faulkner, she's created an entire fictional universe, and she's giving voice to a people whose voices have been silenced. Plus, she's one hell of a storyteller. ...more
Tomson Highway oughta stick to playwrighting. The acclaimed dramatist (The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move To Kapuskasing) has penned a first novel tTomson Highway oughta stick to playwrighting. The acclaimed dramatist (The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move To Kapuskasing) has penned a first novel that should have been rejected, politely, at the audition stage. An uneasy mixture of Gabriel García Marquez and Judith Krantz – magic realism with sex and careers – Kiss Of The Fur Queen chronicles the lives of two brothers, Champion and Gabriel Okimas. Terrible things happen to them at the Catholic school they're forced to enter. Later on, Jeremiah battles racism to become a concert pianist, while Gabriel struggles with homophobia to become a ballet dancer who has promiscuous-yet-mystical sex with strangers. Throughout, they're watched over by a dream-like apparition called the Fur Queen, the rez fairy godmother. Despite autobiographical elements, the writing lacks authenticity. The early passages are way too dreamily sentimental, and Highway clutters the book with clichés. People are "still as a rock" and use "every ounce of courage" and characters and situations pack up and leave, taking with them any tension they might have generated. Even on the level of dialogue, where a playwright should shine, Highway fumbles. One scene where the brothers discuss religion has more ideas than drama. Fur Queen does offer insights into what it's like to straddle two cultures – Jeremiah wonders how to say words like "concert pianist" and "university" in Cree. And the book's best writing comes in a colourful scene with Miss Maggie, a tough-talking arctic fox. Too bad the rest of the book doesn't have Maggie's vitality. ...more
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