Review: "There There" by Tommy Orange

There There, the debut novel from author Tommy Orange is the kind of crazed, angry and passionate kind of novel I nearly beg for at the start of any given year. Filled with a string cast of memorable characters with webs of connection that run deep and ancient, it offers a different kind of story about indigenous people than what we are used too. Gone are all the trappings that might come to mind from the kinds of stories you’d read about Native Americans in school or college. This book is not about them, but in a way it kind of is, because while it takes place in the modern world, specifically Oakland, California which has a large population of indigenous people, it is intricately tied with the sins of the past and how, whether consciously or subconsciously, the people who inhabit the book’s pages are beholden to and burden by such a fraught and brutal history, both in personal histories and the overall history of Native Americans. But beyond its obvious contexts, this book is an exciting debut novel, filled with frenetic energy as the anger and resentment of the characters boils over into an unavoidable and tragic conclusion. It begins in a rather strange way with a dreamlike essay cataloguing historical injustices and really sets the stage for what’s to come and the undercurrents that will flow just below the surface of events. I had heard about it before I began the book, and I was worried it would be tiresome and overly didactic, but thankfully it is not like that at all. It has a dreamlike quality to it that blends fantasy and reality, and I couldn’t help but think of the voice as disembodied, much like the ghostly narrators of Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings. From there we are introduced to about 10 major characters that all take up the right amount of space in this relatively short 290-page novel. There is Tony Loneman; whose fetal alcohol syndrome (the Drome) hides his intelligence makes him a pawn in the violent plan of a few local gangsters, Dene Oxendene, a local artist whose grant money allows the Oakland Powwow at the center of the novel take place, Edwin Black, an overweight 30 year old with a useless college degree who sees his internship with the group organizing the powwow as a way to out of his rut and a path to finding out who is father is, Orvil Red Feather, a teenaged boy who will dance for the first time in the powwow and the decades long story of Opal Violet Victoria Bear Shield and Jacquie Red Feather (Orvil’s grandmother, two half sisters with worlds of hurt behind them that they must carry with them. The book contains many hypnotic scenes that bridge the real world and the spiritual, like the character Harvey’s encounter with the tall whites in the Arizona desert, the dark symbolism of finding spider legs underneath your skin and Edwin’s clunky yet poignant retelling of the what happened to Native Americans through one of his stories. And it all leads to the aforementioned powwow and a halfhearted plan to rob it. These final few pages are devastating and contain the emotional pay off of the whole story. It does not offer clear answer, but the ending is a thing of perfect beauty. If you want an exciting, fresh and new voice in 2018 literature, look no further than Tommy Orange and his first of what I hope are many more books. 

Rating: 5/5