Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
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Book Reviews of Reservation Blues
Book Review: Entertaining!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my favorite Sherman Alexie book. There are times when I laughed out loud and other times when I had to wipe away a tear.Book Review: An Eye-Opening Read!
Summary: 4 Stars
With Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie is able to wrestle with what it means to be an American Indian and show the consequences that come with the loss of identity and culture. Not only are these issues at the forefront of the novel, but they are a reality for many American Indian reservations across the country. Sometimes it takes a story to open your eyes to the struggles happening outside of your own backyard. For me, Reservation Blues was an eye-opening read.
The story begins with legendary blues player, Robert Johnson, visiting the Spokane Reservation in search of a mystical religious woman named, Big Mom. He gives his guitar to Thomas-Builds-A-Fire who starts an American Indian Catholic rock band with his friends, Victor and Junior. The only problem with Thomas' idea for a band is that none of these characters have any musical background. Thomas is a fairly religious man who has lived through a childhood of poverty while Victor and Junior are the local Reservation tough guys. This is why Robert Johnson's guitar acts as the catalyst for the entire story. It is with this initial passing of the guitar that Alexie sets up the theme of identity loss. Just as Johnson sold his soul to the Devil, Thomas and his band mates embark on a journey which leads them down a road of self discovery and assimilation.
I may have a personal bias when reviewing this novel because the love for music runs deep within my blood. Even so, Alexie's witty writing style is a delight to read. It amazes me that he can write with such humor despite the hardships he puts his characters through in the story. But don't think for a moment that Alexie does not care about the problems and themes present in his book. He may write with a self-deprecating style of wit, but the themes he presents in Reservation Blues are powerful fictional accounts of real life issues facing American Indians across the country.
Book Review: A book that is touching and tragic
Summary: 4 Stars
Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie chronicles the coming-of-age struggles of several teen Native Americans. Set against the backdrop of reservation poverty and dysfunction, the teens are united by their optimistic garage band hopes. Eventually they travel off the reservation and straight into some typical rock band problems. In the end, they find themselves back on the reservation, a place both comforting and harrowing to them all.
Although this book is fiction, at times Alexie's descriptive writing makes the whole entire scenario seem very real. Reservation Blues honestly depicts struggles with addictions, suicides and unemployment. A poignant theme of the book was how the band worked so hard to leave the reservation for a better life. At the same time, they were shunned by their friends and family precisely because they had left the reservation. For example, on page 95, the group returns home from a successful gig, only to find one of the band member's father passed out drunk on the front lawn. Throughout the book, the struggle for identity and hope was both touching and tragic.
Honestly, I didn't understand a lot of the mysticism of the book, especially the guitar. It appeared, it disappeared. It enchanted, it haunted. Overall, it confused me. True, the guitar was an allegorical symbol of hopes and dreams and the prices you might have to pay in your life, but in the end the mystical guitar distracted me.
Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues gives voice to important, yet often overlooked, concerns of American society. The book is a mixture of traditional beliefs, religion, addictions, poverty and a desire for a better life. It's not a pretty story, but it is one that needs to be told.
Book Review: Absorbing but occasionally a bit over the top.
Summary: 4 Stars
Reservation Blues is Sherman Alexie's debut novel based on the characters he introduced in his acclaimed collection of Short stories, The Lone ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
Billed as a masterpiece of "magical realism" the book tells the tale of a group of Spoke Reservation Indians who come into possession of a magical blues guitar and ride it's powers almost to fame and fortune.
Personally, while I found the book to be absorbing and entertaining, the text often seemed to me to extend well past the outer bounds of magical realism into the realms of myth on one hand and outright fantasy on the other hand. I don't see that invoking the mysticism of Native American culture gives on unlimited elasticity with traditional genre conventions. The whole deal with the guitar, for instance--an object essentially destroyed and reborn on several occasions throughout the text, goes well beyond what I would consider to be the bounds of magical realism.
That being said, the characters are well drawn and fully fleshed out, the story is engaging and Alexie has a knack for sensing when he's pushing the bounds maybe a bit too hard and reigns himself in in time to avoid too much chaos in the story.
Alexie has often been called a writer's writer and I'm not quite sure why that is. There was nothing particularly unique to the text in terms of construction, dialog or sequencing that seemed particularly noteworthy to me. Perhaps the techniques and styles everyone refers to are too subtle for my eye but if so, they are truly subtle indeed.
Nothing of which detracts from the fact I enjoyed the book very much and look forward to trying other Alexie efforts in the future.
Book Review: A Half-baked Potatoe
Summary: 4 Stars
Reservation Blues is basically a book written to stereotype Native Americans. If you respect Native American culture, this is probably not the book for you. It stereotypes a race of people more than any other book I have ever read, and because the author, Sherman Alexie, is a Native American, it makes the stereotypes even more believable. This is not to say that it is a bad book. In fact, it is quite a good book with a distinct, original, and refreshing voice filled with tongue-in-cheek humor. As far as the story goes, it is a good story with believable characters that are easy to connect with. The problem though is that it never reaches a climax. It goes up and up but falls short of any real climax point. The ending is unfulfilling with the struggles of the characters never finding a true resolution. The story ultimately leaves the reader with a half-baked feeling. Reservation Blues isn't a must read, but if you are looking for a new style of writing or a book to read in the meantime, I would recommend this book.