There There
Tommy Orange · 2018
Twelve Native Americans converging on an Oakland powwow. Orange's debut begins with an essay on the history of violence against Native peoples that is itself one of the great pieces of American writing, and the novel earns that opening.
The case against
Twelve narrators in under three hundred pages means nobody gets room; just as a character deepens, the chapter ends and another begins. The convergence at the powwow leans on coincidence, and the finale cuts off mid-catastrophe, withholding resolution for nearly everyone. Orange's nonfiction prologue is so strong the novel spends its whole length being outwritten by its own introduction.
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