With enough impact to leave you thinking about days after turning the final page, this is a breathtaking tableau of a group of people who are broken and disillusioned by a society who took advantage of them, but whose strength and beauty is evident. At just under 300 page, this was a fairly quick read and I’d highly recommend getting a copy!
Title: There There
Author: Tommy Orange
Type: Fiction
Published: 2018
Pages: 290
TW: Rape, Racism, Sexism, Violence, Death, Neglect, Drug Use, Overdose
“We are the memories we don’t remember, which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way we do, feelings from memories that flare and bloom unexpectedly in our lives like blood through a blanket from a wound made by a bullet fired by a man shooting us in the back for our hair, for our heads, for a bounty, or just to get rid of us.”
In terms of an education in native voices, this book felt like a raw and insightful look at that. Each character had a complex history and as a result all felt unique and three dimensional. Given the nature of the perspective constantly changing, I think that all readers will be able to find at least one story that they can latch onto and connect with, if not more!
Review overview
Summary
This was an absolute suckerpunch of a book. I’ll be honest for the first 2/3 of the book, I was enjoying the characters’ stories (it’s written almost as a shot story collection just with a very tightly woven connection between them, very similar to Girl, Woman, Other), but I wasn’t that connected to it. However, the ending was just something else. Suddenly the affections I felt for the characters were compounded and heightened and I was so gripped and invested in all them.
