I wanted to like this so much. There was magical realism which isn't usually a problem. I think I just didn't understand the symbolism. There was a bit of poetry, which I enjoyed.

I like Sherman Alexie. He's quite funny and is one of the few writers I know of who writes about Indians (American Indians, that is) as contemporary people with all the good, bad, and ugly that implies. Too many others, and far too many people, seem to treat Indians as symbols of lost innocence or immense wisdom or noble savages or what have you, something that Alexie likes to mock in this and other writings. The story here is of a group of young men on the Spokane Indian Reservation who form a rock band (this is precipitated by the arrival of Robert Johnson, the legendary blues singer, at the reservation) and the adventures they have as they try to make it in the world of commercial music. They are joined by two young women from the Flathead reservation in Montana, play Seattle, are flown to New York for a recording session, but I'm not going to say how it all turns out. The characters are all well drawn and quite believable; the background of poverty, isolation, and pervasive alcoholism on the reservation is there but it is clearly only a part of life on the res. Oh, the poverty is pretty pervasive, but so is the humor and intelligence and joy and viciousness and cruelty of the community. Good stuff.

Alexie does an amazing job of story telling. This narrative follows familiar characters. The tone is set out-right by the name. It is riddled with musing anecdotes, reflections on indigenous views, and a world prospective that educates the non-native reader. The story uses prose and rhythm to illustrate his thought process like a true master. A great read.

This was a really engrossing story involving Native Americans without the patronizing victimization that you usually find in stories about Native Americans; basically, the white man screwed the Indians but the modern Indians are trapped by their own culture and envy of each other from ever breaking out (or that's how I read it.) A novel of very complex emotions which leaves you feeling the frustration and pride of being Native American but which doesn't point out any clear solutions. Everyone's a victim and they are their own worst enemy in the end.

good book.

I appreciated the honest perspective of the author who grew up on the reservation portrayed in the book. Four stars for the poetic song lyrics at the start of each chapter alone - outstanding. The author's a cultural warrior, illustrating the state of affairs for Native Americans while poking fun at them & whites; sometimes in the same breath. He shows how Native Americans were set up for failure on the reservation, but the inner workings don't help the people succeed either. I liked many of the characters, flawed and lost for many reasons - but fiercely loyal and proud to be Native American.

“The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared.” This riff began with a conversation about a father. “Where’s your dad now?” “He’s gone.”

I was a long time getting to Alexie’s well-praised and wonderful first novel and I regret the delay. Like the world described in the film “Down by Law,” it is a sad but beautiful novel, at times funny and hopeful and at other times tragic with the weight of history. Alexie writes beautiful prose, adept at realism and a kind of mystical spirituality. He can even pull off bringing bluesman Robert Johnson into this tale of a Spokane Indian rock and roll band. The dialogue is briskly colorful. The characters are rich and varied—from the band members to Big Mom, a mythic music teacher whose tutees included, among others, Elvis and Janis and Jimi but decidedly not Jim Morrison (who wasn’t welcomed alive, nor is he welcome since he died) and Father Arnold, the local Catholic priest. “A prayer,” Alexie writes, “and a joke often sound alike on the reservation.”

There are pleasures subtle and blunt—for the latter, record company executives that share the names of 19th century Indian fighting generals. The band’s name is Coyote Springs. Its lead singer and the book’s protagonist is Thomas Builds-the-Fire. Before founding the band, he is an outcast story-teller, whose extemporaneous stories entertain some and infuriate others. One of the running gags is the universal law that the lead singer must be the band leader, recognized as such by all authorities: local bar owners, hotel clerks, booking managers, native and white police. He is also the band’s songwriter, and writes Native American blues-based songs.

Coyote Springs has a complicated relationship of love and hate with their reservation, which loves and loathes them. They have, with the help of Robert Johnson (it is his guitar that Victor, the band’s lead guitarist, plays with sudden ferocity and imagination) and Big Mom, a shot at the big time with Cavalry Records. The novel’s plot builds toward their New York audition and whether the band will last long enough to make the trip and how they will fare should they survive to travel to their audition.

Alexie is frank about poverty, alcoholism, suicide—its prevalence and its root causes—on the Spokane reservation, as well as the schizophrenic stereotypical views of whites towards Indians, the contemporary versions of the Noble Savage and just plain savage dichotomy. Reservation Blues is imaginative, earthy, true. Alexis is a unique voice in American letters.

Funny, well-written - gently poking fun at the stereotypes of life on the reservation - spiritualism and humor in a pleasant mix

Sherman Alexie and his cute jacket photo mullet got under my skin in a big way here. I don't like the term "magical realism" simply because it reminds me of Gabriel García Marquez and his Song of Myself style grandiosity (even though I do enjoy reading him). But there's really no better term to apply in these situations, and Alexie does it well and straightforwardly. And I feel like even though he's focusing on the 5 main characters, he manages to do communal narration. All the while saying "I know you're coming here with assumptions about Native Americans even if you don't and I'm going to make you recognize that." And even if it's not the central story of the book, it's the central story. And it can also be just a very absorbing read. I don't know. I kept being more and more impressed by the whole thing.

As my friend Karen said yesterday, Sherman Alexie has the ability to make you laugh and cry in the same sentence. I love how he touches on the irony of a situation that drives it deep into the loneliest part of your being instead of just staying cliched and clever on the surface.
I love how Alexie weaves between various stories seamlessly and how the mythology and the reality of Native Americans blurs hazily together. Somehow this makes the reality starker and the mythology even more wistful. I also love how Alexie always ties the present into the historical. In this book, a lot of the horror of the Native American genocide is relived through characters' dreams. It raises the question of how do we incorporate our cultures' histories into our own lives.... how do we grieve the past? How do we atone for it? How do we live our lives informed by it but not chained by it?
The movie "Smoke Signals" by Chris Eyre is based off of this book loosely. Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor are two of the main characters in the story. If you liked "Smoke Signals", you like this. I loved both.

This is my second Sheman Alexie book (first was, of course, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian). I love the subject matter and writing style, so this was an easy buy for me. That said, it’s been some time since I’ve read the former, so I didn’t have much in terms of expectations. I might have expected a bit more humor, but otherwise it wasn’t off in any way.

I think the book surfaces a lot of issues concerning Native Americans (and American culture) that I liked more than the plot line itself. And it’s not like any of the issues is a surprise: poverty, alcoholism, identity, colonization, mysticism, and cultural appropriation all have a strong presence throughout the book. But the inclusion of these elements is seamless, natural, and in no way overdone. What emerges is a fairly believable story with a few mystical tweaks (the lovely inclusion of Robert Johnson, the crossroads demon, and a strong Native American mother figure) that easily embodies the lived experience of a specific class of often-overlooked Americans.

While I didn’t particularly love the book, I’m glad I read it, and I’m likely to pick up more of Alexie’s work. The characters are rich and heartbreaking. The flow of the book probably wouldn’t work anywhere else, but now it just seems essential for this genre.

i really enjoyed this book. thought it had a totally original style until somewhere near the end when i suddenly realized it was richard brautigan. oh well, still liked it.