Sunday 28 June 2009

The Sunday Salon: The Absolutely True Diaries of a Part-Time Indian by Alexie Sherman

If you haven't read it grab a copy! Or even better download the audio version!

This YA novel deals with some pretty tough issues: death, racism, alcoholism and even masturbation. You shouldn't let you put you off.
The narrator grows up with a dysfunctional family on an Indian Reservation, despite having brain damage as a child he is determined not to follow the same path as his parents so he travels 25 miles a day (often having to hitch-hike) to attend a better funded state school. His life is cmplicated by his race, what others see as the 'abandonment' of the 'rez and all the normal teenage boy/girl stuff.

The audio book is read by the author and is fantastically done, I was hooked immediately and loved every minute of it. Apparently the novel is has loads of cool pictures so I'll have to grab a copy to look at at some point.
I'll be searching out more of his books in the future.

Challenges:
YA 2009
999
My Year of reading dangerously (banned in Oregan)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't know if he'll fit the challenge, but Alexie's short stories are wonderful. I loved his anthology "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven." They are full of humor, though they deal with very serious subjects, just like the novel does.

katrina said...

Thanks for the tip, I'll be searching them out