Product Description

Sherman Alexie is an acclaimed and bestselling writer. In "Ten Little Indians", he offers eleven poignant and emotionally resonant stories about Native Americans who, like all Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heartrending, tragic, sometimes wondrous moments of being that test their loyalties, their capacities, and their notions of who they are and whom they love. In "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above", an intellectual feminist Spokane Indian woman saves the lives of dozens of white women all around her, to the bewilderment of her only child, now a grown man who looks back at his life with equal parts of fondness, amusement, and regret. In "Do You Know Where I Am?", two college sweethearts rescue a lost cat - a simple act that has profound moral consequences for the rest of their lives together. In "What You Pawn I Will Redeem", a homeless Indian man must raise $1,000 in twenty-four hours to buy back the fancy dance outfit stolen from his grandmother fifty years earlier. Even as they often make us laugh, Sherman Alexie's stories are driven by a haunting lyricism and naked candour that cut to the heart of the human experience, shedding brilliant light on what happens when we grow into and out of each other.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #577166 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sherman Alexie, a gifted poet and storyteller, ploughs familiar yet fertile ground in Ten Little Indians, his third collection of short stories. The book contains nine stories populated by at least one American Indian (usually of Alexie's Spokane heritage, and mostly living in Seattle), but "little" is a bit of a misnomer; the book addresses human (not necessarily Indian) rituals, ceremony, love, loss, insecurity over life choices and personal sacrifices. A lot of intense basketball is played, too.

When Alexie is at his best, his stories function at a profoundly sad level, where broken down characters are broken down even more, but are fierce-willed enough to attempt Phoenix-like transitions. Unfortunately, the weakest stories appear first, where characters and situations seem far too contrived or forced, the dialogue wooden and questions or exclamatory sentences appear annoyingly in bunches. In the last half of the book, a married couple, once intensely in love but now lost in life's routines, deal with infidelity ("Do You Know Where I Am?"); a bright basketball prospect attempts a comeback, 20 years after giving up the game ("Whatever Happened to Frank Snake Church?"); and a transient Indian finds his grandmother's regalia in a pawn shop and seeks to quickly raise the lofty purchase price ("What You Pawn I Will Redeem").

Brilliant turns of phrase abound, such as ceremonies being "pitiful cries to a disinterested God," or when a gym rat plays against "Basketball-Democrats who came to the court alone and ran with anybody and Basketball-Republicans who traveled in groups of five and only ran with each other." Ten Little Indians is an uneven collection but it contains some significant and memorable stories. --Michael Ferch, Amazon.com

Synopsis
Sherman Alexie is an acclaimed and bestselling writer. In "Ten Little Indians", he offers eleven poignant and emotionally resonant stories about Native Americans who, like all Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heartrending, tragic, sometimes wondrous moments of being that test their loyalties, their capacities, and their notions of who they are and whom they love. In "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above", an intellectual feminist Spokane Indian woman saves the lives of dozens of white women all around her, to the bewilderment of her only child, now a grown man who looks back at his life with equal parts of fondness, amusement, and regret. In "Do You Know Where I Am?", two college sweethearts rescue a lost cat - a simple act that has profound moral consequences for the rest of their lives together. In "What You Pawn I Will Redeem", a homeless Indian man must raise $1,000 in twenty-four hours to buy back the fancy dance outfit stolen from his grandmother fifty years earlier.

Even as they often make us laugh, Sherman Alexie's stories are driven by a haunting lyricism and naked candour that cut to the heart of the human experience, shedding brilliant light on what happens when we grow into and out of each other.

About the Author
Sherman Alexie is the author of Reservation Blues, Indian Killer, and The Toughest Indian in the World. His books have earned him a citation from the Pen Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction, the Before Columbus Foundation's America Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize.

Customer Reviews

Read it!
I Brought this book on a whim, and I'm glad I did! These brilliantly written and well-observed stories have such a strong voice within all of them. Alexie seems to be able to write a Spokane 19 year old female college student to a gay wrestler with apparent ease, turning a phrase that had me laughing on the bus home from work without shame.

Interracial relationships, politics, sexism, racism and homosexuality are all written as if in passing, and flaws within American society are held up for criticism.

There really is a direct voice of cultural identity here; I am neither American or American Indian, but an outsider looking in to a writer creating characters who are all suffering from a floundering search as to what they are. And yes, it made me break my illusions of cultural stereotypes that society and media gave me (lets blame both, everyone else does)concerning the Native Americans.

Good read, whatever your sexual inclination, race or age.