تا اواسط کتاب، داستان جذابیت ضعیفی برای من داشت.
داستان بسیار ملال آور به نظر میرسید، به طوری که از خودم میپرسیدم
چرا داستانی رو میخونی که در هر صفحه به مست کردن شخصیتها اشاره می‌کنه!؟
اما از جایی به بعد تقریباً بی وقفه و در هرفرصتی داستان رو ادامه دادم؛
شاید چون مثل سرخ‌پوستها، درد بریده شدن ریشه‌ها و از بین رفتن هویت فردی...خواسته نشدن و سرکوب برایم آزاردهنده و تداعی‌کننده بود...

I liked so many aspects of this book that I don’t know where to start. The magic realism is the perfect style for the plot. The character development makes it easy to fall in love with each character, even Victor. The imagery and symbolism are beautiful. It’s the ideal balance of serious, funny, and heartwarming. I will probably have to read it again in a few years to pick up all of the details I missed.

If reading Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is like running alongside a longhouse with 24 windows, getting 24 glimpses or mental snapshots of life inside, Reservation Blues is like being invited in and offered a can of Pepsi, a hot piece of fry bread and a place to crash. You are there for the awkward silences and shy smiles, the pettiness and jealousy of a small community, the loyalty and tradition, the despair and depression. In Fistfight, you’re buoyed by the narrator’s survival and the artificial decorum of a brief visit. In Reservation Blues you’re living on the reservation; tempted to turn away from particularly painful moments and compelled to stand solemnly when “characters” you’ve come to care for fall beside you. In the terminology of white American history, Reservation Blues is a Tall Tale with larger-than-life everything . If we look for a more universal term, the “magical realism” of Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes to mind and explains what Alexie probably meant when he coined the term “reservation realism.” Some folks have probably criticized Reservation Blues for being too preachy and heavy-handed but we’re talking about a couple hundred years of brutality and genocide so I think it’s fair to cut Alexie a little slack. While I was disappointed that Robert Johnson didn’t play as significant a role as I expected, the real Coyote Spring’s lyrics are fitting tributes to his legacy.

Fantastic. Another homerun for Sherman Alexie. The author lifts W.E.B. Dubois' color veil briefly for us to see into the complexities of life on an Indian reservation. The effects of placing the people native to the land that is now The United States of America in what were in effect concentration camps with invisible physical fences, but psychological barriers to keep them out of the way of "civilization" are still taking a toll on them today. Having Robert Johnson suddenly appear on a reservation to get rid of his possessed guitar, given to him by that gentleman, and seek redemption is brilliant. The guitar changes hands and creates problems, more than they already had, for the Indians that use it as a way off of the reservation. I now understand why a musical group like Indigenous can sing "I Got the Blues This Morning" with such palpable feeling. You don't have to be an Indian to enjoy the masterful story told in this book. Three young Indian men take possession of Johnson's guitar and it takes control of them, or does it just accentuate the problems they faced every day. The inner conflicts they face daily, the problems with relationships between the men and women they encounter in their lives, including within their own families are enough to overpower a weaker people. Happy ending? Probably not. Tragedy and conflict, definitely. Read it.

Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues is a moving, atmospheric story of the affect a stranger, Robert Johnson and his enchanted guitar has on Thomas Builds a Fire and others who live on a Spokane Indian Reservation. Robert Johnson, trying valiantly to detach himself from the guitar's magic, goes to visit Big Mom, a shaman from whom he hopes to receive healing. The guitar comes into the possession Victor Joseph who along with Thomas Builds a Fire and others forms a band that magically plays songs that reach into the hearts of those who listen. The individual stories of others in the story unfold along with the attempts to convey the pathos and humor in the life of each character as they strive to find meaning in a culture decimated by the explorers who ravaged and took over their lands. The beginning of each chapter features a poem/song that underscores the theme of each chapter of this beautifully written story. I laughed out loud at parts of this book, and was moved to tears in others all the while rooting for survival and resolution for each character.

Other than a few silly comments tossed here and there, I did not like the bulk of the book. I understand it is a fictionalized, mystical story as seen with the Big Mom character symbolizing the Native American culture-- but some parts were so fantasy that I could not follow the story, get to the point, or even care. It was just laughable at times. The characters make it easy to dislike them, and the book overall makes Indians out to be dumb, alcoholic, hopeless people incapable of making their lives better- and shame on white people for becoming technologically advanced? Or if they do go beyond the reservation, they are doomed to fail and get shunned by their old community, never to be welcomed in again.

The book perpetuates stereotypes and seems to show that there is no end in sight for Native Americans, which just made me sad by the time I was done reading. Perhaps that is the point of the book?

For the first half of this book, I figured it was going to fall into that "pleasant but mostly forgettable" read, three star territory in GR parlance. Then this happened:

"He's gone."
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. Bust the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house.

Ok, Alexie, that got my attention.

On the surface, the book is about five young Native Americans who form a rock band, but for whom nothing ever quite goes right because that is the story of their lives born on and to the reservation. That's the most shallow synopsis. If one has patience and is willing to let the story unfold a little slower than modern life usually spoonfeeds us our plots and lessons, it is so much more. There's myth, legend, history, and a bit of the kind of magic that makes a story memorable.

Wonderful with words and storytelling to savor…this book was a gift to read (and the fact that it was also a signed first edition made the time I spent with this book even more special).

Sherman Alexie is such a talent. When I was in primary school, I watched Smoke Signals and even though I wasn't old enough to appreciate the messages that were subtler than the fact that Victor was a bully and Thomas was a nerd, that film still retains a fast hold on my memory twenty years later. A couple of years ago, I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I enjoyed that one, although it leaned heavily towards the young adult genre. With two such disparate and long-separated experiences of Alexie's work, I didn't know what to expect from Reservation Blues, but I knew it was going to be good. I just didn't realise it would be so sad.

Looking back on it, the True Diary was tinged with the same underlying sadness but it was well disguised by the youthful optimism of the adolescent protagonist. Not so with Reservation Blues, which is entirely adult in its disillusionment, cynicism and ironic blend of hope, stubbornness and the terrible power of music. Knowing what happened to the Victor and Thomas of Smoke Signals made it even sadder for me, in some ways.

This book is the first in my attempt to read books written by authors from different parts of the world (that is, written about a place/community by a member of that community) outside of the overwhelmingly Anglo-American, northwestern European literary tradition that I grew up in. Being raised in Hawaii, where the Native Hawaiians have maintained a level of respect and cultural integrity that has not been given to Native Americans, my experience and understanding of indigenous people and culture is much more positive than the way that white people are depicted when it comes to Native Americans. That is probably a big part of why this book made me so sad. Growing up being taught to respect and honour the Hawaiian culture, language and traditions, it was almost painful to read about the treatment of Native Americans, historically and presently. Alexie's ability to write so beautifully and evocatively is part and parcel of that pain.

A magical realism odyssey, full of soul, which explores a number of important issues/themes along the way: music and its meaning, faith, heritage, friendship and community. Joy and sorrow both permeate this lively and hugely entertaining novel, from which I learnt a great deal. (Now I know where Seattle gets its name, for example.) An excellent read. Recommended.

Quirky book! Funny names for the characters: (Chess/Checkers/Thomas-Builds-The-Fire)....

Yet....moving and Powerful story (sad/funny/sad/funny/sad/.......'wacky' much of the time!

I'm glad I read this book. (I don't think I would have picked it on my own). I have my book club to 'thank'! Its not my favorite 'cup-of-tea' (in style of 'types' of books) ---yet, this is a book I'll never forget. (THAT is worth something!!!)

I come away with a deeper-added appreciation for our Native Americans!

I loved this line in the book: "The only things that will survive a nuclear war are cockroaches and my father". (too funny)!

This is the debut novel by Sherman Alexie, who had already put out a near perfect short story collection: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven a little earlier. I always think about Alexie as being a very talented writer, but it’s interesting to consider that because his output is varied in terms of type, the over all collective oeuvre is a little harder to assess.

This novel begins with the blues musician Robert Johnson making his way onto the Spokane Indian reservation and finding a way to more or less dump his cursed guitar. It’s picked up by Thomas, a young man in his 20s, and as he strums (and becomes both enamored and clearly cursed) he decides that he and his friends, Victor and Junior (all of these names should sound familiar to Alexie readers) start up that band. They’re terrible at first and less and less terrible as time passes, but they fall instantly and often hilariously into the trappings of rock life, as well as the same old trappings of their reservation life. In a series of mishaps, punctuated by song lyrics as they write, we see the band go through a number of adventures and misadventures.

As happens in all of Alexie’s writings, but especially the early stories, there’s a real capacity for a story or a moment within a story to say something both oddly funny and emotionally harrowing. So whether it’s the three boys seeing an older drunk man on the side of the road and two of them thinking it might be their fathers before remembering their fathers are dead or having unfounded and unspecific suspicions about Flathead Indians, or any of the numerous other moments that flower in this novel.