23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Do you REALLY know who-dunnit?, July 9, 1997
By A Customer
Sherman Alexie delivers again, coming through this time with a brilliant look at prejudice, hatred, fear, community and lack of community. Although the Amazon.com blurb and the reviews of others on this list seem to suggest the killer's identity, don't believe it. The killer is carefully constructed so that the reader has no clue as to the killer's gender, age, tribal affiliation -- in fact, the killer could just as well be white, since scalping was a practice that originated with European traders, rather than with Native tribes. Alexie blurs the killer's identity on purpose -- perhaps to reveal our own prejudices. If you believe only Indians can scalp, then you will believe the killer is an Indian. If you believe all races are capable of equal savagery against each other, then the killer could be anyone. Read this book and test your own prejudices -- racial, sexual, and sociological prejudices. You may surprised to find out something about yourself as well as about Alexie's gift with words. My review may make INDIAN KILLER sound like a social or political manifesto, but more than anything else, the novel is a vibrantly written murder mystery, a real, honest-to-God page-turner. You won't be able to put it down
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Indian Killer -- John Wayne Flipped Around, October 3, 2005
Alexie is a riveting writer who can make the heart pound and the breath freeze. He's also refreshingingly honest about the disconnect between the violence and suffering and soul-destroying abandonment forced upon First Nations people and the absence of recognition of that destruction by its perpetrators. As a mystery, it's a terrific read, a Dean Koontz or Steven King' telling of the wicked gone awry.
As a well-rounded retelling of what goes on inside people's hearts -- and how they run or wallow in their fears -- it's more like a gothic murder mystery dressed up in Indian clothes. If you don't know any of the history or the people, it's fascinating reading. But once you've finished the book, you realize, excepting the African American characters, everyone body else is one-dimensional -- even if exotic. All the "wannabee Indians" are reduced to being hypocrites or fools. Why must this be? Go into Asian or French studies, and one gains respect as a sinologist or diplomat. Similarly, the book is full of white boys and Indian boys who's only emotion is getting revenge. Yawn.
However, if you do read the work as an expose of how little we do know of the past and what masquerades as authority, the work is powerful. First off, we're tremendously ignorant about our own history. The word redskins became prominent in the 19th century because European Americans no longer could tell the First Nations apart. Take a 1,000 books on First Nations and 980 of them are the same old coffee table book on "Indians of North America" just getting recycled. Of the 20 remaining titles, 15 may provide information at the tribal level, and only 1 will be an actual biography. That leaves only 4 titles that were written by people who knew the languages. These could be reprints of a French of British work from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, or, if your damn lucky, your bookstore will carry something by contemporary First Nations writers, such as Mary Harjo, Simon Ortiz or Joseph Bruchac. Sadly, Alexie does not quote these people in his book. However, Alexie is right, if you don't know your past, it will come back to haunt you.
The second reason why the book is so compelling is that though the story is about the infant who is all but ripped from his mother's uterus to be raised by others, it is really about the mother -- who in order to survive herself must cut herself off from her own flesh in blood. She must become invisible in order to survive, which her son mirrors by learning the chants to make himself invisible as he carries out his deeds -- not all of which are evil. Although Alexie doesn't overtly raise it, we all know from history that First Nations families had been split apart and murdered for centuries. While Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclaimation in 1863, the northern midwestern states publicly paid bounties on Indian scalps -- at least African slaves had value as living beings. Within a few years of the Battle of Little Bighorn, Canada and the United States in 1881 both passed NATIONAL laws that forced the surviving native peoples into internal exile -- to live on lands where they did not come from; banned them from speaking their own languages; and, forbidding them to practice their own religion. It took nearly a century before these human rights were restored to First Nations people. The path of repression and assimilation is also forced on the lead character of Alexie's novel.
Ironically, the stolen little boy gets renamed John Smith, the most non-descript name among European Americans. Poor John Smith has not only lost his inheritance, but he has no identity even in his adoptive parents' culture. Alexie's description of the loss of self, loss of relationship, and the grandiose fears that grow in the poor boy's heart is phenomenal. John Smith is clearly afraid to be himself -- and what's worse, he doesn't know how. He doesn't even know which Nation he comes from and in this sense, he is as ignorant as the European Americans around him.
Alexie doesn't resolve the disconnect between the past and the present, the chasm between John's birth parents and adoptive parents, and the break between the wannabees and the bloods (which, by the way, is another 19th century myth from European culture). However, in bringing this pain to mind and heart, Alexie has achieved no small or easy thing. While Alexie is not asking us to bury the hatchet, he does do a remarkable job of asking us to walk in another man's shoes.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not for the faint of heart . . ., September 12, 2000
But excellent for book group discussions. A friend of mine scared me away from Indian Killer for months because he was so put off by Alexie's "explosive anger and hatred." I put the book on the shelf until I felt I could take the heat, but my book group made the decision for me. Once started, I couldn't put it down . . . I finished the book in three days.
First let me start with a warning: Alexie IS angry--he is spitting-bullets-pissed-off-angry--and this is not an easy book to read. However, Alexie is also a wonderful writer who delights in knocking the reader out of his/her comfort zone and probing sharply at his/her sense of the ironic. To me the book seethes more than it explodes--it penetrates the veneer of political correctness and exposes the fear, confusion, and rage that boils beneath the surface.
A challenging and powerful read that stays with you, Indian Killer pushes buttons--just look at the customer reviews. Most reviews speculate who the killer is, and why the killer exists, but to Alexie, I think it is less important who the Indian Killer is, than what s/he represents. The killer is a physical manifestation of racism itself--representing rage, frustration, confusion, but most of all fear. Indian Killer is a book that inspires and terrifies, is violent and righteous, is brave and despicable, and challenges the reader to reevaluate traditional notions of black and white, right and wrong. Read it with a book group and watch the speculations fly.
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