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A review by struedandspaetz
Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Wow, this was a well-crafted book!
While I was reading this book, I felt like the narrator's therapist. At the start of this book, I thought the stories were shifting back and forth between two characters...when I got to the end and realized that it was actually the same character, I was really surprised!
The stories were not in chronological order but the events do all circle around the narrator and his experiences growing up. You see the past and the signs of trauma exhibited by the family members who raised him...from his grandma, his mom, and her boyfriend. These experiences all add up and make it clear why the narrator became addicted to drugs.
I thought that it was a powerful choice for the author to end with the story that he did. History has laid bare that there is a lot of systemic violence enacted upon First Nations people...both in the past and continuing on with the system now that pulls apart families and is designed to make life hard for them to thrive. This final chapter reflects what that looked like in the narrator's family. There is no happy ending, no clear solution or way out for the family...but that's what makes this book realistic fiction and not fantasy. <spoiler/>
The stories were not in chronological order but the events do all circle around the narrator and his experiences growing up. You see the past and the signs of trauma exhibited by the family members who raised him...from his grandma, his mom, and her boyfriend. These experiences all add up and make it clear why the narrator became addicted to drugs.
I thought that it was a powerful choice for the author to end with the story that he did. History has laid bare that there is a lot of systemic violence enacted upon First Nations people...both in the past and continuing on with the system now that pulls apart families and is designed to make life hard for them to thrive. This final chapter reflects what that looked like in the narrator's family. There is no happy ending, no clear solution or way out for the family...but that's what makes this book realistic fiction and not fantasy. <spoiler/>
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Drug use, Grief, Alcohol, Alcoholism, and Drug abuse