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mondyboy 's review for:
Lost Children Archive
by Valeria Luiselli
I can’t say I much liked this book, which is a shame because I think Luiselli is a terrific writer (read The Story of My Teeth, it’s incredible). It’s also a shame because the subject matter is visceral and powerful, both the wholesale destruction of Native American communities throughout the 19th Century and the Country’s recent awfulness around the deportation of children who cross the border illegally. But the parents at the centre of this novel - one searching for lost tribes, the other searching for lost children - are horrible, self-obsessed people going through a marriage breakup. Spending half the book with them is painful. Thankfully the second half of the novel is through the eyes of their highly intelligent ten-year-old son, and his decision to run away with his five-year-old sister (I seriously can’t blame him). It also has the best depiction of a five year old girl in literature (children’s voices are difficult to capture, but Luiselli nails it). For that alone, the book gets an extra star.