Reviews

• Up close look at the extermination attitudes and practices of the European settlers of North America towards the First Nations peoples, as well as a very educational view of the daily life of the members of the Blackfoot Nation in the nineteenth century. A very well told tale by a very good writer.

• From the first page, this novel slides you into the life and world-view of the Blackfoot tribe. Welch uses words like blackhorns or wags-his-tail for wildlife, names such as the Seven Persons for constellations, and the Blackfoot names for places like the Big River or peoples such as the Parted Hair People. In less-capable hands, this would be confusing. However, Welch has a perfect sense for how to use this shift in language to bring modern American readers into the Blackfoot world. Welch also treats the spirit world, visions, and medicine in a perfectly natural and believable way. Some “supernatural” events defy explanation for moderns, but others have naturalistic interpretations. The overall effect is most similar to magical realism in Latin American fiction, where the supernatural fits seamlessly into a realistic story. The protagonist, Fools Crow, undergoes several transformations in the novel. These are both personal and “political,” and part of a crescendo of events for his Pikuni band. If you know Blackfoot history, you already know where these events are leading; if not, I will let Welch guide you. And yet the book ends on a hopeful note after these dark events, a clear sense of how Welch makes sense of his people’s history today. It’s an extraordinary novel, highly recommended for all audiences.

• Extraordinary. Essential reading.

• A student I am tutoring was assigned this novel, so I read it to help her with the writing she has to do about the book. As I had never heard of the author or the novel, I was pleasantly surprised by what a good novel it is. Some traditionalists dismiss native American novels as cultural artifacts of anthropological interest but not worthy of being included in the canon of Western literature. While it is true that "Fools Crow" is of anthropological interest as the characters inhabit a vanished world in which there is no boundary between everyday reality and dreams, it also has all the ingredients of a great novel in the epic tradition of a hero who undertakes a quest, initially as an individual and later on the behalf of his people

• Je suis fan de James WELCH et je ne suis pas du tout déçue par ce roman. Un régal pour ceux qui, comme moi, aiment l'auteur

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