Reviews

War Dances by Sherman Alexie

Only show reviews with written explanations

juntakinte1968's review

4.0

What am amazing collection. I've never read an author so able to walk a tightrope between humor, sadness, and pop culture references in my life. The man is a treasure.

abrswf's review against another edition

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5.0

This was a fast, laugh out loud funny book. Having said that, it is also one of the more honest and thought provoking looks at how race plays out in our society these days. For example, it starts with a story that is both heartbreaking and -- somehow-- humorous -- about an encounter between the Spokane Indian narrator and an African American young man. Alexie spends more than a little time pointing out how awkward and even impossible it can be to navigate the competing narratives and claims of people from oppressed, but different cultures. I was a little less taken with his preoccupation with the romantic foibles and obsessions of aging men, as frankly some of his thinking is pretty darn sexist. The book is heavily if not entirely autobiographical, as is typical for Alexie.

donnar's review

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5.0

He had me at Building the Lego Star Wars Ultimate Death Star

donttakemybooks's review

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3.0

I love Sherman Alexie's writing and his narration is great. I will apologize in advance for not knowing titles to the stories. As a whole the short stories were funny and genuine and awkward and heartfelt. There is always something in them that pushed the bounds of comfortable, but in a subtle way, rather than a shock tactic. Paul Nonetheless is charming in spite of the fact that he's an awful father and husband. I rooted for him to hook up with the married Sarah Smile, even though he'd kind of lost it in the most middle-aged man way. George Wilson was also a sympathetic character, even though he beat an innocent kid to death and couldn't even explain to himself why it had happened that way. I had read some of these stories before as they are reprinted in Blasphemy, but I was again struck by the tenderness of the blanket story. My big complaints here had a lot to do with the audio production. The poetry didn't add anything for me and was hard to separate out from the short stories because it felt pretty prose-like. Also, there was hardly any pause between stories and some of the stories were told in numbered parts and it was hard to distinguish between separate works some of the time. Perhaps this was intentional, but it was confusing and as much as I like Alexie's narration and think it adds something to the reading experience, I almost wish I'd had the print to refer to so I could see how the stories were formatted there. All in all, I always recommend Alexie's writing/narration and this is no exception.