cnorbury 's review for:

The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter

3.0

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An interesting story, originally passed off as autobiographical, but actually, fiction, written by the polar opposite of a young boy raised by Native American grandparents in Appalachia during the Depression.

I struggled with wading through the dense slang and idiomatic speech and grammar of uneducated hill folks back in that day. If I never hear the word reckin again, it'll be too soon. The story is charming and interesting but reads more like a series of essays about growing up in that time and place. Not much tension, only a little bit of growth by Little Tree, but that would've come as a function of growing up, not so much because of who raised him.

Knowing that the author hadn't actually lived that life, nor apparently done much research into what it was like to grow up in that situation, I had a hard time buying into the story or the characters. The reference to the life of the "Noble Savage" seems apt because the rugged, simple life of Little Tree and his grandparents is overly romanticized.

Entertaining, but not socially significant in my view.