Customer Reviews

Rabbit Boss

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This novel put the author's name on my must-read list. It is a powerful story of the effect of white culture on the native American. Starting with an encounter with the Donner party, it continues down to the early 30's. Parts of the novel are written in a visionary style similar to "Black Elk Speaks." There are numerous memorable characters, especially Hallelujah Bob and Captain Rex, who loses his thumbs. There is violence and tragedy. Sanchez has an excellent ear for dialogue, especially considering that this book was written when he was only 21. I have read this book three times (at over 500 pages) and recommend it to all my friends.

I found Rabbit Boss as an impressionable 16 year old, living in a small town in the English Midlands in the mid-1970s. It's hard to say quite why it made such an unforgettable impression on me, but suffice to say that I logged on to this site to try and find THIS book - I have been searching for years. Now I find it is regarded as a canon of American fiction - and rightly so. Sanchez's brilliant evocation of a state of mind, and of a whole way of being, was entirely new to me and has haunted me ever since. The quality of the writing is simply stupendous.

Yeah, this is the one! Well, at least one of the TOP FIVE BOOKS read this year by me! Honestly, you'll get plenty of honesty in this hear piece of fict'n... purnhaps even mor'n you already know, heh? Wonderfully written, and like Kerouac used to say, it's an "Indian thing". The story follows the natural flow of generations of Washo people try to eek out a meagre existance in the "wild" west; beautifully documenting the collapse of the many layers of native culture since their "discovery".

"The Washoe watched." Thus begins the tale that the NEW YOK TIMES listed as one of the 100 best books of the Twentieth century. It has the beauty of a Shakesperean tragedy, marvelous comic passages, and a Washoe family you will embrace. With care and restraint, despite his vivid prose, Sanchez traces exactly what happened to the Washow nation of American Indians after the white man arrived. - Ann Seymour

This book reminds me of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" in that it's huge, kind of messy, and unconventional as all hell --- but a Great work of Art. I don't know what makes it so genius, exactly, but it is just simply awesome.