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seeceeread's review against another edition
When crossing into the reservation where my mother lives, and any reservation, really, there's an interesting transformation: the land becomes a mix of feral beauty and man-made blight. On one side of the highway you can see nature at its finest, and on the other, humans at their worst.
Marion has returned to the small town where he grew up. He adopts a dog and starts a relationship with a closeted former classmate. And then he's visited by a revenant, a once-murdered teen who sometimes inhabits the ghostly body of a wolf. As he tries to figure out why this spirit trails him, he uncovers some dark connections.
Staples compellingly digs into reservation details: basketball as a symbol of social mobility, brotherhoods of young men labeled gangs, substance misuse, despair. We skip from a man riddled with shame at his sexuality to a weird encounter in a sweat lodge, and from an alcoholic mother who's just fallen out of sobriety to a young woman who's love never met their daughter. I think this is meant to be interconnected short stories, with various chapters narrated by different people. Perhaps it was the flat audio delivery that rendered too many characters in a similar voice, or maybe it was the similarity in perspective granted too many characters ... but this felt unpolished. I never felt invested in the plot, either; I kept waiting for the part that would bring everything together to hook me, but the jawbone family tale that's supposed to fill that space left me unimpressed.
bookwrm526's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
radikaliseradgroda's review against another edition
3.0
The first 60% or so flew by but after that it really lost its way. It also could have really used some family trees to help keep track of all the POV characters.
ajmadour's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I enjoyed the main story, which is essentially what kept me reading. I did not enjoy the writing but appreciated the initiative of the author. It was a bold move to include so many points of view, but I ended up feeling distracted by this and felt it did not meaningfully contribute to the story, especially because we never spend much time with these additional characters. It is an interesting and a complex story but not necessarily an entertaining read.
ajb24's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting. Bittersweet but poetic, it hit an emotional nerve in me where I feel deeply moved by a story, but I also feel like some things went over my head. Or something like that. Can't fully explain what prevents me from giving this a 5 stars, but it could be a 4.5. I think perhaps audio was not the best format for the book - I wholly enjoyed the narration, but the unannounced shifting of POVs forced me to pause and recalibrate what exactly was happening one too many times for me to say I *loved* this book.
theangrystackrat's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
1goodkaren's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I really liked this exploration of community, sexuality, indigeneity, and family. It was funny, tender, and felt emotionally true.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
justjussy__'s review against another edition
This ended up being not going where I thought it was, and just wasn’t for me.
lezreadalot's review
3.0
“Spirits can be bitches like that.”
3.5 stars. A beautifully written if sometimes confusingly written piece. I went into this thinking that it would be a mystery, and I guess by some stretch of the imagination and definition you could still call it that? In reality it sits somewhere between literary fiction and magical realism, and follows a young Ojibwe man looking into a murder that happened when he was a child, while he navigates a relationship with a deeply closeted former classmate of his. There are secrets, revelations, and a strange ghost dog. Marion's journey is a really interesting one, and I loved the deep dives into sexuality and culture and family lineage. His dynamic with Shannon is a painful and familiar one, and the writing really shines.
I didn't love all the stylistic decisions and POV decisions. But at the same time, I don't know how else it could have been written. For the most part we're in Marion's first person POV, and sometimes we get glimpses of Shannon's POV, in a searing second person, which was so interesting, and I loved it. But the nature of the story also necessitates us getting chapters and perspectives from a lot of side characters, people in Marion's past, people connected to this mystery, and after a while all of the different POVs made the book feel really cluttered and stifling. Again, I'm not sure how else the author would have achieved what he set out to do, but every time we would veer off into these different directions, I felt like the book lost a lot of its traction. But take that with a grain of salt; maybe this style would work better for others. I did sort of like how this allowed the author to reveal certain things to the reader, independently of Marion, but I have to admit I got lost a couple times.
Listened to the audiobook as read by Kaipo Schwab, and found it really enjoyable, if not the most polished when it came to dialogue and stuff. I liked the paths this took, and it ended in a really apt way. A fascinating, one-of-a-kind read.