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losgiraffee 's review for:
Indian Horse
by Richard Wagamese
This coming of age story is about a young boy, Saul Indian Horse, who is part of the Ojibway people in Canada and gets ripped away from everything he knows and loves to be whitewashed in a Indian Residential School. They crammed the school with Indian kids that they captured or tore away from their family, gave them "more suitable sounding names", taught them to reject their gods and ways, accept Christianity, and their "schooling" was essentially learning English and child labor.
Saul discovers hockey and the escape it gives from the harrowing experience of his own life. He is naturally skilled and driven and eventually scouted and asked to join more professional teams. After being attacked, name called, shunned, embarrassed, and provoked, he develops a deep seeded anger and loses the love of the game. He loses his path and wanders, sinking into the abyss of alcohol and anger and has to find himself once more.
First of all, I would just like to say that as a judger of book covers, this one tricked me! No indication that it was about hockey.
Ok, I'm half kidding. The cover actually doesn't divulge any of the interior contents at all. In fact, something much more sinister is resting within when you delve into the pages.
While you get the sense of a mostly happy Native American family and community at the beginning, it only gives you a taste of that feeling. Almost instantly it gets torn apart, landing Saul in a "school" that abuse, death, and rape runs rampant through the children that are forced to live there.
The writing is simple, but almost dry. Factual. Textbook almost. Thing one happened and then thing two happened kind of writing. Effective in it's own rights, but honestly not a ton of character development. I felt the most emotion when it described his feelings and emotions playing hockey. Once hockey was cast aside it was back to thing one and thing two.
Overall enjoyable but lacking slightly in the ability to transfer me there and have me experience the raw pain and devastation of the events that took place.
Saul discovers hockey and the escape it gives from the harrowing experience of his own life. He is naturally skilled and driven and eventually scouted and asked to join more professional teams. After being attacked, name called, shunned, embarrassed, and provoked, he develops a deep seeded anger and loses the love of the game. He loses his path and wanders, sinking into the abyss of alcohol and anger and has to find himself once more.
First of all, I would just like to say that as a judger of book covers, this one tricked me! No indication that it was about hockey.
Ok, I'm half kidding. The cover actually doesn't divulge any of the interior contents at all. In fact, something much more sinister is resting within when you delve into the pages.
While you get the sense of a mostly happy Native American family and community at the beginning, it only gives you a taste of that feeling. Almost instantly it gets torn apart, landing Saul in a "school" that abuse, death, and rape runs rampant through the children that are forced to live there.
The writing is simple, but almost dry. Factual. Textbook almost. Thing one happened and then thing two happened kind of writing. Effective in it's own rights, but honestly not a ton of character development. I felt the most emotion when it described his feelings and emotions playing hockey. Once hockey was cast aside it was back to thing one and thing two.
Overall enjoyable but lacking slightly in the ability to transfer me there and have me experience the raw pain and devastation of the events that took place.