Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the horses screamed, 28 Aug 2003
I have read some terrific novels recently, by the likes of Henning Mankell, Elmore Leonard and the great Walter Mosley; but I was not prepared for the sad beauty, edgy high spirits and mystical shadings of Sherman Alexie`s small masterpiece.
A brief review cannot hope to do such a rich, unusual, profoundly moving book the justice it deserves.
An elderly, `undead` Robert Johnson, the legendary blues singer who `sold his soul to the devil` to play better than any other guitarist, arrives `at the crossroad` (naturally!) in the Spokane reservation in Washington state. He is met by the gentle Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who directs the tortured bluesman to Big Momma on the hill who acts as a kind of fallible earth-momma come witch-woman throughout the book, and is the only one who can cure what ails Johnson. However, when he goes up the hill he leaves his guitar behind...
Said guitar has a mind and music of its own. Thomas forms a band with his ne`er-do-well friends plus a captivating couple of sisters name of Chess and Chequers. They hit the road. That`s when a whole lot of trouble starts - but a whole lot of redemption too.
That`s all I`m going to give away. But one thing I want to emphasise is that, though this wonderful novel may make you want to cry in places, it sure as hell will make you laugh. Alexie has a fine, unsentimental ear, and doesn`t for a moment indulge in the `noble Indian` myth. The perhaps paradoxical result is that Reservation Blues shows its varied, rounded, utterly believable characters (even the `supernatural` ones) in a bravely human, likable and - ultimately, because so human - noble light.
This is a unique work. I`m glad it`s in my life. Read it! Oh, and the screaming horses? As I say, read it...
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
like nothing you've read, 10 Sep 2007
Alexie Sherman is a brilliant and clever storyteller. He weaves the real cause of bullying, and the politics and awfulness of the creation of indian reservations and does it in such a way that if you just want to read the story you can, and it is a great story. Clever. The characters are so strong and the imagery has meant that two days later I'm still on that reservation and in that faithful blue van and hoping Thomas Builds-the-Fire has a happy life beyond the book!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cracking good read, 4 Sep 2008
Alexie is an American Indian and when he writes of reservations and the poverty and the alcoholism that plague them, he is writing from his own experiences. This is a novel about those at the very bottom of the American social order, the dispossessed indigenous people who have a per capita income lower than any other racial group in the country. He doesn't tell you this in so many words, but he makes the social position of the Native Americans very, very plain. He has an astonishing knack for explaining not only how but also why things have gone so drastically awry for them.
This novel is a slightly whacky tale about the varied adventures of a blues band from the Spokane Indian Reservation. It should, given its backdrop, be depressing, but it's not: it's very funny. I found myself laughing out loud at the antics of the characters and then, one line later, being painfully clouted right in the emotional solar plexus. The characters, as American Indians really do, live in two worlds at once: the modern one and, jarring with it in sometimes quite mind-bending ways, that of their own historical and cultural background. Alexie, quite without preaching, mildly and even wittily shows the reader why so many Indians turn to the bottle, run back to the rez after trying out the modern world and misuse power when it does come into their hands. It's heartbreaking.
This delivered the sort of emotional twanging very few books deliver. I'd have liked a bit more in the way of description and scene-setting, and (I don't often feel this way about a book) I would have liked it to be a little bit longer, to fill things out a trifle more. These are fairly minor quibbles: better a bit too short than rather too long.
There'll be another Alexie in my next Amazon order. I'm hooked.
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