SOURCE: Bell, Madison Smart. “Native Son: Sherman Alexie Explores the Confusion and Anger Born of Oppression.” Chicago Tribune Books (17 November 1996): sec. 14, p. 3.

In the following review, Bell explores the rage experienced by the Native-American characters due to the loss of their cultural identity in Indian Killer.

Over the course of writing several novels, Sherman Alexie has evolved a style that might be called modern Indian magical realism: a melange that combines grindingly realistic portrayals of reservation life today with swift and deft satirical sketches of the rest of modern American society, connected by natural and supernatural events and interpenetrated with episodes from the one-sided, 19th Century struggle between embattled Indian tribes and the encroaching white people. At his best, Alexie can integrate all these disparate ingredients into some fascinating, and fantastic, conceit.

Suppose, for instance, that Spokane Indians got hold of musician Robert Johnson's guitar, a magical instrument...