Scan barcode
A review by katieparker
Flight by Sherman Alexie
4.0
We watched the movie “Smoke Signals” in my Washington State History class back in ninth grade, and that was my first exposure to the work of Sherman Alexie. Everyone was quoting it for weeks afterward, and this part in particular:
“Hey Victor! I remember the time your father took me to Denny’s, and I had the Grand Slam Breakfast. Two eggs, two pancakes, a glass of milk, and of course my favorite, the bacon. Some days, it’s a good day to die. And some days, it’s a good day to have breakfast.”
I had been eyeing his book Flight for a while, but it isn’t available for the Kindle yet, so I wasn’t sure when I would get to it. It’s hard to go from reading on an e-reader device to a book with actual pages, which is why I hadn’t tried in nearly two years. But I bought a paperback copy of it at Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago, and when I was having trouble picking a Kindle book to read, I thought, “Screw it,” and grabbed it off my bookshelf. What a wise decision.
Flight is about an angry and violent fifteen-year-old called Zits, a half Native American and half Irish boy living in Seattle. His drunk Indian father left the moment he was born and his mother died when he was six, and since then he’s been shuffled between foster homes and getting into trouble for a long string of crimes. One day in jail Zits meets a seventeen-year-old boy named Justice, who later teaches him about guns and convinces him that doing a Ghost Dance might bring back his mother. But in this case, a Ghost Dance is going to a bank and killing innocent people. Just as he enacts this plan, Zits is transported into the body of an FBI agent in the 1970s, thus beginning a journey through time and space. At one point he finds himself in the body of a young Indian boy in the 19th century, and at another time he is an old, feeble Indian tracker. Sometimes he is a by-stander in these different settings, and at others he is a full participant, but along the way he learns about humanity and the stakes of revenge.
This is a really short book (181 pages, with huge type) but an awesome one nonetheless. Alexie’s writing is both humorous and honest, and I thought Zits came across similar to Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. There is a lot of coarse language, due to the narrator being a troubled fifteen-year-old boy, but it doesn’t feel out of place. I highly recommend the book to anyone looking for a quick but substantial read.
“Hey Victor! I remember the time your father took me to Denny’s, and I had the Grand Slam Breakfast. Two eggs, two pancakes, a glass of milk, and of course my favorite, the bacon. Some days, it’s a good day to die. And some days, it’s a good day to have breakfast.”
I had been eyeing his book Flight for a while, but it isn’t available for the Kindle yet, so I wasn’t sure when I would get to it. It’s hard to go from reading on an e-reader device to a book with actual pages, which is why I hadn’t tried in nearly two years. But I bought a paperback copy of it at Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago, and when I was having trouble picking a Kindle book to read, I thought, “Screw it,” and grabbed it off my bookshelf. What a wise decision.
Flight is about an angry and violent fifteen-year-old called Zits, a half Native American and half Irish boy living in Seattle. His drunk Indian father left the moment he was born and his mother died when he was six, and since then he’s been shuffled between foster homes and getting into trouble for a long string of crimes. One day in jail Zits meets a seventeen-year-old boy named Justice, who later teaches him about guns and convinces him that doing a Ghost Dance might bring back his mother. But in this case, a Ghost Dance is going to a bank and killing innocent people. Just as he enacts this plan, Zits is transported into the body of an FBI agent in the 1970s, thus beginning a journey through time and space. At one point he finds himself in the body of a young Indian boy in the 19th century, and at another time he is an old, feeble Indian tracker. Sometimes he is a by-stander in these different settings, and at others he is a full participant, but along the way he learns about humanity and the stakes of revenge.
This is a really short book (181 pages, with huge type) but an awesome one nonetheless. Alexie’s writing is both humorous and honest, and I thought Zits came across similar to Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. There is a lot of coarse language, due to the narrator being a troubled fifteen-year-old boy, but it doesn’t feel out of place. I highly recommend the book to anyone looking for a quick but substantial read.