Looking back on all the books I read in 2017, these are the ones that weigh the heaviest, meaning I think about them during class changes, on long runs, in the shower, or while making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They weren't all published in 2017, but a handful were. As always, thanks for reading.
Indian
Killer by
Sherman Alexie (1996)
This book is so many things: American satire, urban
crime thriller, reservation punchline after reservation punchline, artifact
from America’s ongoing culture wars, the collected chromosomes of so many
shared literary lineages, from Leslie Marmon Silko to Washington Irving and
Ernest Hemingway. The plot moves quickly through Noir alleys and collegiate
classrooms, and then Alexie lands an Epilogue from the top rope that makes all
the pain and tragedy from the book’s plot shrivel into nothing more than one
rotten fruit born of many, and perhaps that’s the saddest truth of all: “The
tree grows heavy with owls” (420).
