Indian Killer (thoughts)

Remember when I gushed all over Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie’s first published novel? Well, now I’ve read his second novel Indian Killer, and turn that gushing up by a factor of ten.

Seriously, my brain was squealing like a twelve-year-old fangirl wearing a Mrs. Edward Cullen t-shirt at a midnight showing. I accessed octaves usually reserved for high sopranos, I loved this book so, so much. It’s a dark book, and it’s full of rage…that’s really what propels the narrative forward. And I’m not going to lie: sad things happen. And if you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ll know that I’m kind of a pansy about books like that. But even with all of the darkness, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough and I can’t recommend this highly enough, because it some of the most genuine, unforgettable characters I’ve ever read.

So here’s the premise: the book takes place in Seattle, and early in the book a killer attacks a white man, killing and scalping him. Of course, the killer’s branded the ‘Indian Killer,’ and his presence sets off a lot of racial tension between the Native Americans and whites in the city. The book alternates between several characters’ points of view (both white and Indian), several of whom might be the killer, and Alexie captures each character’s voice so perfectly. I don’t often enjoy novels with varying narrators, simply because I often find all of their voices too similar. But with Alexie, you know from the first sentence exactly which character you’re with. And as they develop throughout the narrative, I found myself identifying more and more with every one of them, and hoping that they would be safe.

I suppose you could call this a literary thriller, because there is the mystery of who the killer is (short chapters are told from the killer’s point of view but always using ‘the killer’ and avoiding personal pronouns) and the tension of who might be the next victim. But I worry that that kind of labelling will might make people hesitate to pick it up, when I really want you to all run out and read it right now so we can have a big discussion about it. This is definitely a novel about how race can define us, as much as we might fight against it. And reading it as a white girl, I had a visceral sensation of what it might be like to be Indian in today’s US. But Alexie doesn’t go for any easy, black-and-white delineations. He protrays a wide variety and white and Indian attitudes, and he leaves the moral judgements up to the reader. He’s the kind of author that trusts the reader, that doesn’t spoon-feed us everything, and for that I love him.

I feel like I’m not accurately portraying how readable this book is! It’s about 400 pages, and when I found out I couldn’t renew it, I had two days to read it. So rather than my usual 50 page chunks, I read it 100 pages at a time. And when I was reading it, I was completely dead to the world, the way I used to read when I was younger. The book had me entirely within its grip, and when I realised I had read another hundred pages, I was shocked, because it felt like no time or effort at all. I didn’t read Indian Killer so much as devour it, which was a wonderful feeling. I seriously can’t wait to read everything that Sherman Alexie has written, and I highly, highly advise everyone who hasn’t read him yet to give him a try. He’s simply incredible, and the amount of versality he’s shown in his writing style makes me want to idolise him.