Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Night of the Living Rez

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

46 reviews

bookishevy's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The title of this read had me expecting a reservation full of ghouls, but this was way better.

Set in the Penobscot Indian Nation reservation in Maine, the 12 stories are narrated in first-person by David, later known as Dee, who moves to the reservation with his mother after his parents' divorce. The tales oscillate between young David and adult Dee and feature a rotating cast of characters in the community.

David unearths a jar that holds an ancient curse that causes his family to unravel; Dee discovers his friend Fellis passed out in the freezing woods while trying to swindle a drug dealer; David's grandmother suffers from Alzheimer’s, often mistaking him for her dead brother; Dee and Fellis attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.

Generational trauma and addiction are the main themes of this read. David starts smoking at a young age, and Dee is sick, reliant on methadone while he and Fellis drink and chase Klonopin "pins" and think up schemes to score large sums of money.

Dee and Fellis are grown men still depending on their mothers for support. Dee is coping with the past while figuring out his place in the world. His older sister Paige also struggles with substance use and finding her own way. Like many addicts, they're not present as the substances have rendered them zombified. Who can blame them for wanting to escape their surroundings?

With depressing topics like poverty, loss, grief, substance abuse, violence, racism, miscarriage, sexual assault, death of a child, Alzheimer’s disease, death of the elderly, and animal death, you're going to feel all the feels. You'll even laugh because Talty uses his identity to give life to these stories, and, like Black Americans, Native Americans must find the comedy in tragedy to survive.

Darrel Dennis' narration lends authenticity to the struggles and spiritual beliefs of the characters that made me empathize with them.

Talty shows that what the disenfranchised stand to inherit from previous generations is scarier than any horror film.

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the_midwest_library's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was the pick for my irl bookclub, overall I thought the story was really compelling but the writing style and presentation may be a barrier for some.

The story is told over several short story "chapters" which do not really have any chronological ordering to them, but instead are tied together through theming. The flip flopping back and forth between events/ages/timelines is a bit jarring.

However, the overall impact of the story at large is great. I particularly enjoyed the weaving of the directional theming (red, white, black and yellow) throughout the book. I thought the narrative voice was fairly strong and the story really challenges a lot of indigenous stereotyping.

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the_other_yvonne's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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adrienneh's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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rnorthie's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

4.0

This is a hard book to rate. The writing was beautiful and I loved the challenge of piecing the stories together and the last 2 stories were amazing (in a sad tragic way). I think in general some of the stories weren’t my favorite but it didn’t take away from the intrigue they slowly built up to the last two stories. Definitely worth a read.

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toasterstrubes's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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mercerhanau's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I started listenings to the audiobook on a friend’s recommendation (can't remember who?) without actually reading the back-of-book-type introduction at all. I think I went into it expecting something more supernatural/horror, which is not exactly what this book delivers (in the usual way). I set myself up for genre disappointment, so take my review with a grain of salt.

It’s a reflective set of stories, looking at slices of life from the narrator as a child, teenager, and mid/late 20s, looking back from later in life. Lots of drinking and suffering from drug addition, wanting to get clean. Depressing, occasionally funny, a LOT of scenes with varying degrees of nausea, dry heaving, and vomit. Unpleasant. But there are also scenes of tenderness that help flesh out the characters.

The title (and a couple references to zombies) encouraged me to look for what could be “horror” or the supernatural in stories that otherwise feel like a fictionalized memoir. Animal presences serve as metaphors that connect interpersonal struggles to the natural world in all its power, chaos, and… stenches.

More thoughts on real-life "horror": SPOILERS / Content Warnings

Horrors of caterpillar corpse carpets, decaying snapping turtle smell, miscarriage, child deaths, postpartum depression, having a dead twin (like a teratoma?), feeling responsible (sort of) for a sick infant’s death while still a child yourself, social services knocking incessantly at the door while home alone with one’s sister’s baby (feels like a zombie movie), dementia resurrecting ghosts/memories of long-dead relatives, witnessing physical and sexual violence, car crash, feeling disconnected from one’s body and mind in the throes of drug addition and withdrawal.

Feels like an important story to tell. Nuanced representation of a deeply interconnected Native community and family. The writing style and characters didn’t resonate with me, and that’s okay! I definitely see why other people love the book.

Cf. / Reminded me of themes in…
- Wellness, by Natan Hill:

psychologically shifting stories and guilty uncertainty about what really happened during a childhood tragedy.

- The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones:

Indigenous perspective on spooky pregnancy stuff. The horror of nature (esp. animal-related). Losing contact with indigenous knowledge that might have helped prevent/dispel the horror.

- Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare, by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto:

More spooky reproductive/fertility stuff, whether supernatural or just things that happen to human bodies that aren’t talked about thanks to patriarchy keeping reproduction a mysterious, taboo subject. Complex feelings about family dynamics, both tender and cruel.

- This Thing Between Us, by Gus Moreno:

curses, generational trauma, feeling haunted by lost loved ones and/or forces beyond our understanding. Losing one’s mind a lil bit. Gore. Technology running amok, sometimes in subtle ways: Grammy’s car radio turns on by itself, like the Itza (Echo Dot equivalent) in TTBU.

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