Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Night of the Living Rez

Strange and illuminating to read this set of intense stories set so close to home for me, but depicting a world I know so little about. Short stories are not usually my favorite, but these are interconnected enough that book feels as though it's on the verge of being a novel, constructed jumping around in time in a very effective, compelling way. I look forward to seeing what Morgan publishes next.

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emmas_bookshelf's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is an incredibly poignant debut. The way time jumps allow us to understand how Dee was shaped by his upbringing on the Rez, and how we are able to look at little David knowing how pieces of his life turn out, was extremely effective narrative tool. The whole cast of characters was incredibly well developed and I felt like I could so clearly picture the scenery and settings.

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rorikae's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

‘Night of the Living Rez’ by Morgan Talty is a set of vignettes that tell one Indigenous boy’s story as he grows up and looks to find his place in the world. Shifting from his childhood into his young adulthood, we get to see pieces of David’s life and how he relates to the world.
This is an interesting book because I think that Talty’s writing is rich and evocative. It’s easy to care deeply for these characters and feel connected to them. He presents a very stark image of their existence and how their relationships shift over time.
Despite this, I also had a hard time with this collection. Part of this is because I don’t think it is appropriate to call this a story collection. The story follows one character through different points in his life, looping back and forth in time such that for the entirety, I actually thought we were following two characters, a child and a young adult. The title is also a bit misleading as it leads one to believe this will be a horror story collection while it is much more contemporary literature. The fault here is really in the marketing, not in the book itself, which is an affecting piece about growing up Indigenous in Maine and David’s specific life story.
I would recommend this book, but I think it is crucial to go into it understanding that it is not a horror short story collection as the title and description might lead you to believe but actually the story of a single character told through vignettes that loop through time between the character’s childhood and young adulthood.

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alyssasaurus's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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jourdanicus's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

An incredible read. This one will have to sit with me for a while before I can think of any key takeaways. One thing that stands out to me is that the stories all felt cohesive... It felt to me that they were all told by the same narrator from different points in his life. I know they're labeled as all separate stories, but they seemed so connected which kept me engaged, especially toward the end when everything seemed to come together.

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_belty_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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annemaries_shelves's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is a really solid debut short story collection, however I didn't love it like I thought I would.

Part of it probably was my incorrect expectation that there would be speculative elements, when it was actually a contemporary setting (that incorporated Penobscot Nation worldviews).

I really enjoyed actively reading the stories but found it easy to put down and I wasn't super motivated to pick it up every time. The writing was clear and strong and I think Talty will continue to improve and grow as a writer. My main issue with the collection is the sometimes confusing timeline. Because he opted to shuffle the order of stories out of linear time, it took a while to place each one when it was happening in our main character, David's, life. His character work was excellent, though, and even through limited third person persctive, I got a good sense of who each person in David's life was. I was rooting so much for David and his friends and family but things never really improved - frustrating but oftentimes realistic.

Overall, I don't think this will be a collection that sticks with me strongly (it's been a few days and I'm already losing details) but I will definitely keep an eye out for future works by Talty. I think this will work for a lot of people though, and encourage readers to seek it out if contemporary short stories tackling the lives of Indigenous (Penobscot) families and young men is of interest.

CW: The book came with a sticker for references to death, self-harm, and childhood trauma. I would also include on-page interrupted rape, drug use (especially prescription meds) and alcohol use, and infant death.

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sarah984's review against another edition

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dark funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is a collection of short stories about incidents in the life of one character on a reservation in Maine throughout his life. Some of the stories were better than others (the stories about the friends messing around kind of blended together for me, but the titular story was incredible) and they're told out of chronological order for a reason I couldn't really grasp aside from putting the best story at the end.

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