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A review by paola_mobileread
Fools Crow by James Welch
3.0
A very interesting book for me, and one I am very glad to have read. The "native-indian" style of writing (in which days are counted in terms of sleeps, months in terms of moons, seasons in terms of the expected arrival of Cold Maker, and so on) plunges the reader immediately inside the Lone Eaters camps, and there are so many little details that provide a very vivid picture of what life was like for the Indian Blackfoot Tribes at the end of the 19th century, how they felt, what made their society click and turn.
For this alone I think Welch well deserved all the praise he got for this novel. But in terms of narrative, to me it felt perhaps too preoccupied with using the characters to provide the information, and in this way they come around somewhat flat. Many of the characters are wisdom and patience personified, and in this the novel seems to perpetuate the mith of the "good savage" which I find hard to swallow especially as what is portraied is a society in which superstition is so engrained. In many ways this novel reminds me of Achebe's [b:Things Fall Apart|37781|Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)|Chinua Achebe|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1352082529s/37781.jpg|825843], which is however much more edgy and convincing.
For this alone I think Welch well deserved all the praise he got for this novel. But in terms of narrative, to me it felt perhaps too preoccupied with using the characters to provide the information, and in this way they come around somewhat flat. Many of the characters are wisdom and patience personified, and in this the novel seems to perpetuate the mith of the "good savage" which I find hard to swallow especially as what is portraied is a society in which superstition is so engrained. In many ways this novel reminds me of Achebe's [b:Things Fall Apart|37781|Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)|Chinua Achebe|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1352082529s/37781.jpg|825843], which is however much more edgy and convincing.