Easily one of the best books I’ve read this year, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tells the story of Arnold “Junior” Spirit’s freshman year in high school.
I know. Sounds fascinating, huh? (This is perhaps why my queries are getting rejected: I can make even a great book sound boring…)
Well, despite my riveting summary, the book is amazing. From the first line – “I was born with water on the brain” – Junior’s conversational voice captured my heart. He made me laugh out loud, and I rarely laugh out loud while reading (not even when reading my beloved Jane Austen, who makes me smile like crazy but not laugh audibly). In fact, I bought the book because of these lines on page 3:
I started wearing glasses when I was three, so I ran around the rez looking like a three-year-old Indian grandpa.
And, oh, I was skinny. I’d turn sideways and disappear.
But my hands and feet were huge. My feet were a size eleven in third grade. With my big feet and pencil body, I looked like a capital L walking down the road.
And my skull was enormous.
Epic.
My head was so big that little Indian skulls orbited around it.
I stood in the bookstore laughing so hard my shoulders shook, and I knew I had to read this book – now. That wasn’t the last time I laughed out loud.
But I also cried. This is a tragic, tragic book in so many ways. And yet I did not come away from it feeling only sad (though I felt that, to be sure). I came away feeling like the world is a beautiful, terrible place, and I am so glad to be alive in it. I came away feeling hopeful.
As a writer, I was also fascinated to see how many of the so-called rules of novel writing Alexie broke. And it worked. It more than worked. It won a National Book Award, for heaven’s sake! (To learn more about why it worked, check out the the Story Sleuths blog: they’re analyzing the book chapter-by-chapter all month.) I am always interested to learn which writing rules can be broken and when and why and with what effect. I’ll be learning from this book for a long time to come.
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Yippee! Thanks Kimberlee – I’ll see you on Sunday.
Ooops – I meant to leave the previous comment in today’s post but while I’m here…Taylor read this book and loved it. He hates to read, but was assigned this book in one of his high school classes and really enjoyed it. Then he got to hear Sherman Alexie speak at an event at school. LUCKY! I haven’t read it yet but it is sitting on my shelf so I’ll have to pick it up – thanks for the recommendation.