this book was so fkcign good it's stupid. i finished it and immediately scrolled back to the beginning to start it over. we LOVE A CIRCLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( )

Nothing against the book. I just found it rather boring and a bit dull. I was not engaged while reading it and wasn't particularly wowed by the wiring style. That being said it deals with important topics and I am legitimately excited to study it in class in a few weeks. I think I will appreciate it more then, as this really isn't my taste in reading. ( )

Champion (later Jeremiah) and Gabriel are Cree, living in northern Manitoba. When they are young, in the ‘60s, they are sent away to a residential school. This book follows them beyond the residential school as they grow into adults.

There was some magical realism in the book, which I’m not a fan of. It didn’t make sense to me. The book skipped ahead – skipped years in their lives – quite a bit. That is, we’d get a very brief time at their age, then suddenly (without any real indication beyond a new chapter or part), we would have advanced years. Some of it was good and held my interest, but much of it was also very vague, and you had to figure out what was going on... it wasn’t clear. I hate that. Despite this mostly negative-sounding review, I am rating the book “ok”, for the parts that I liked. ( )

Tomson Highway's experience as a playwright is evident in his first novel but he uses action and theatricality in his prose to his advantage. The narrative of the brothers skips along through years and it is the individual moments of conflict that ripple and resonate through the story even if lacking in a taut sense of cohesion. The scenes woven together display the personhood of these characters and though at times some of the dialogue seems a bit overwrought (the mall church comparison springs to mind) perhaps the effect is necessary, to communicate voices that were silenced for so long, and to speak loudly about injustice that is so quickly shunted. Definitely worth a read! ( )

"I found the story to be enjoyable, linear, and compelling. Both brothers were compassionate, intriguing, and unique. The prose is quiet and beautiful, the story is emotional and powerful. But as a very literal person, I had trouble following the Cree cosmology. We did discuss some of it in class�Äîparticularly the Trickster—which I found very interesting and helpful in understanding the backstory. However, some readers may find this a difficult thing to get past, trying to explain the “why” in the interactions with the Fur Queen or Maggie Sees." ( )