You Don't Have To Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie, 457 pages.
A long, chanted poem, full of pain and longing, by one of America's preeminent poet and novelists, celebrating
and excoriating his past, his life on the reservation, his relationship with white America, his family, and in particular his mother.
Alexie uses humor and shocking revelations as he plays with language, and with memory and with stories told as he tries to sort the "what happened" from the "what might have happened" and the "what we were told happened." Aicoholism, medical issues, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and assorted trauma figure in to the author's life and the lives of everyone around him. His father died after a lifetime of alcoholism, his mother (or maybe it was his grandmother) had something horrible happen in her youth. Alexie tells his story with rage and tears and laughter. He repeats the story with a different ending, with a more frantic and frenetic sort of laugh. It's a beautiful, sad and hypnotic tale. Worth every minute of reading or listening.
Alexie uses humor and shocking revelations as he plays with language, and with memory and with stories told as he tries to sort the "what happened" from the "what might have happened" and the "what we were told happened." Aicoholism, medical issues, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and assorted trauma figure in to the author's life and the lives of everyone around him. His father died after a lifetime of alcoholism, his mother (or maybe it was his grandmother) had something horrible happen in her youth. Alexie tells his story with rage and tears and laughter. He repeats the story with a different ending, with a more frantic and frenetic sort of laugh. It's a beautiful, sad and hypnotic tale. Worth every minute of reading or listening.
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