I've been a ridiculous Sherman fangirl since a Lenape friend handed me a copy of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven, so I'd honestly recommend everything, especially his poetry. (Start with Summer of Black Widows and/or First Indian On The Moon there -- or check the tagged posts on my journal for some past poetryspam entries for a quick taste.)
But focusing strictly on his novels -- you've got two "adult" books, Reservation Blues and Indian Killer, and one other YA, Flight. They're all worth reading, although none of them quite hit the same balance of tone as Diary. Flight has the teenage protagonist, but is much much darker in the most part -- there's a rather Quantum Leap-ish feel as he shuttles between lives, each more traumatic than the last. It's not without humour -- even at his bleakest, Alexie can always find something to laugh about -- but it may be rather harder going, especially if you don't like reading about violence.
Of the two adult novels, Reservation Blues is his first novel-length work and it shows -- it's a bit sprawling and loose in places, though quite readable. The tone here is perhaps a bit closer to the lighter bits of Diary or Lone Ranger (although again, just as there's always humor in the dark bits, there's plenty of sorrow and rage under all the funny.) If you've read Lone Ranger, or the earlier poems, there are familiar characters here in new incarnations. Indian Killer, like Flight, is bleaker and more serious, although it's still got a great deal of ultraviolet humor to it. I think it's rather tighter structurally as a novel, but the ending is a little frustrating to some folks who go into it expecting it to read like a classic whodunit murder mystery and hate the ambiguity about what just happened.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 10:07 pm (UTC)But focusing strictly on his novels -- you've got two "adult" books, Reservation Blues and Indian Killer, and one other YA, Flight. They're all worth reading, although none of them quite hit the same balance of tone as Diary. Flight has the teenage protagonist, but is much much darker in the most part -- there's a rather Quantum Leap-ish feel as he shuttles between lives, each more traumatic than the last. It's not without humour -- even at his bleakest, Alexie can always find something to laugh about -- but it may be rather harder going, especially if you don't like reading about violence.
Of the two adult novels, Reservation Blues is his first novel-length work and it shows -- it's a bit sprawling and loose in places, though quite readable. The tone here is perhaps a bit closer to the lighter bits of Diary or Lone Ranger (although again, just as there's always humor in the dark bits, there's plenty of sorrow and rage under all the funny.) If you've read Lone Ranger, or the earlier poems, there are familiar characters here in new incarnations. Indian Killer, like Flight, is bleaker and more serious, although it's still got a great deal of ultraviolet humor to it. I think it's rather tighter structurally as a novel, but the ending is a little frustrating to some folks who go into it expecting it to read like a classic whodunit murder mystery and hate the ambiguity about what just happened.