The best American novel of the 21st century that I've read.

Very sensory, interesting narrative techniques, but way too heavy for what I want to be reading right now.

Loved some.of the literary devices in this book and it was beautifully written, although sometimes it felt a little verbose. It charts two stressful and distressing journeys of children navigating the Borderlands and feels even more precient and disturbing now Trump is back in power.

I can see where the author was going, but it was so masturbatory, so navel-gazing, it sounded like someone who had just read Kerouac in college, graduated, and then decided to write a novel. I got exactly 20% into the book before having to put it down. I dont need "action and adventure." I love navel gazing. But even Navel Gazer stories have to "move" somewhere. Apart from the actual "move" cross-country for work, this book did not move at all. It could be that the exposition of this book was just longer than it needed to be. I found myself able to excise whole pages that had nothing to do with nothing.

And then I heard the author reference Kerouac explicitly, twice, and new my original guess was correct.

I said this about another book by a gentleman, a doctor who studied cancer and fought his own battle with it, and that is "just because you can write a story about your life, does that mean you should?" The doctor's book (the name escapes me now) explained, factually, a lot of interesting stuff. It was blended with his own story which, while I know it was intense and hard for his family and coworkers, just didnt "stand out." That's what this reminded me of: a perfectly capable writer, and clearly intelligent person, writing a story that, frankly, nobody outside of her kids is probably dying to hear.

The book wasnt bad, it just wasnt for me, and it was not a story (in the 20% that I finished) that kept the reader engaged. This is a book that was "trying" to sound (in my opinion) "deep," and that's what it comes across as - a book trying to sound deep. Those usually fail. If you are writing to tell "deep" story, and to "discover one's self and share that with the world," it usually just sounds like that, like a college writing assignment. Just tell the story, in your words, and dont think about your audience. It should be the "audience of one," as many good stories are written.

Just my opinion as a layperson.

4.5

A mother and her daughter along with her husband and his son leave New York City so that the mother can record sounds of lost children crossing the border, and so the father can record the echoes of Apache warriors. Full of references to texts and audios, the book challenges American history.

Bad story badly written, terrible characters poorly drawn; anti-native racism superfluously included. What a waste of time.