SOURCE: Meredith, Howard. Review of Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie. World Literature Today 70, no. 2 (spring 1996): 446–47.

In the following review, Meredith examines the incorporeal motifs and the spiritual importance of the reservation in Reservation Blues.

The art of Sherman Alexie surprises and delights the reader as the dreamlike images and hard-edged realities in Reservation Blues find a center on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Form and content act in unity to provide a captivating story of the tragic sense of life within a Spokane frame of reference. This beautifully written vision of the earth invites participation in specific patterns of existence.

Reservation Blues provides an intimate perception of Spokane tribal tenets and mood within a multicultural frame of reference. Death, alcohol, poverty, book-burning, and child abuse find their place, along with a sense of the land and the search for tradition. Thomas Builds-the-Fire speaks in a dream sequence for the...