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The monthly book club that I attend met last Thursday morning and by noon of the following Saturday, I'd finished reading our next book which is Tommy Orange's There There. It's a first novel, by a young Native American, which follows the lives of several of his fictional contemporaries from their beginnings in the tough streets of Oakland, CA through their tragic endings in the chaos of a traditional powwow sent awry.
The book reads like performance art as it dances through the dysfunctional lives of these historically marginalized and mostly invisible First Americans. It's not a fun read and it doesn't recommend itself with an improbably happy ending. But it was, for me, an extraordinarily compelling one, as evidenced by the fact that I blazed through its 430 pages in less than three days.
In fact, prior to this one, I'd likely have nominated Amor Towle's A Gentleman in Moscow as "Best of the Year," among books I'd read in the club, and his first novel, Rules of Civility, from among those read outside of it.
But There There is definitely a game-changer for me. As I was reading Orange's brief but vivid history of assaults against the individual lives and collective cultures of Native Americans--which then served as the backdrop for the contemporary events of his story--I thought of Charles C. Mann's epic history of pre-Columbian Native cultures, aptly titled 1491, of which I'd read some 150 pages before deciding, inexplicably, to put it aside.
Tommy Orange's There There has made me decide to revisit 1491 to fill in the history behind the riveting novel that he's written...
LPK
Dreamwidth
11.24.2019
The book reads like performance art as it dances through the dysfunctional lives of these historically marginalized and mostly invisible First Americans. It's not a fun read and it doesn't recommend itself with an improbably happy ending. But it was, for me, an extraordinarily compelling one, as evidenced by the fact that I blazed through its 430 pages in less than three days.
In fact, prior to this one, I'd likely have nominated Amor Towle's A Gentleman in Moscow as "Best of the Year," among books I'd read in the club, and his first novel, Rules of Civility, from among those read outside of it.
But There There is definitely a game-changer for me. As I was reading Orange's brief but vivid history of assaults against the individual lives and collective cultures of Native Americans--which then served as the backdrop for the contemporary events of his story--I thought of Charles C. Mann's epic history of pre-Columbian Native cultures, aptly titled 1491, of which I'd read some 150 pages before deciding, inexplicably, to put it aside.
Tommy Orange's There There has made me decide to revisit 1491 to fill in the history behind the riveting novel that he's written...
LPK
Dreamwidth
11.24.2019
