I’m late, I’m late! I know I’m late; life is a little bit crazy lately, but I actually finished the The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in the first days of December. It took me only two days to finish it; a great read!
Synopsis
So this story is about Arnold Spirit/Junior, an awkward young boy who leaves his reservation to get a better education in a ‘white’ school. This unfortunately doesn’t please his best friend Rowdy, as well as many other people on the reservation, who feel betrayed by Arnold’s choice.
‘I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,’ I said. ‘By black and white.’ By Indian and white. But I know that isn’t true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not.’
–The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie.
My impressions
I loved it. It was funny, and beautiful in its honesty, and I just loved the drawings through the novel. Hilarious. Through Arnold’s sense of humour, I really had a better idea of his character, and how he was seeing the world and himself.
This was such a surprising read. I mean, of course I had no idea what it would be about because I never read synopses, but even in the middle of the novel, the story changed direction and surprised me again, and at the ending too, and the whole adventure was amazing.
If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be damn amazing.
–The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie.
The one thing that annoyed me was that at the beginning, Arnold is said to have have a stutter and a lisp but never again is this used throughout the novel, so I felt like it was there to make us laugh but not exploited entirely.
This novel is about so many things. Growing up, death, self-esteem, family, racism … More than anything, it’s about friendship: old and new, real and surprising, and sometimes closer than we would think.
That’s it for me! Now I want to know what you thought!
Did you like it?
Did you expect Rowdy to be so mad at Arnold?
Who was your favourite character?
Did you think he would love his new school or regret his choice?
Let me know in the comments, and feel free to link a previous post of yours about this novel if you have one! Thanks for reading everyone!
