Katie's review
The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie
It isn’t easy to describe one of Sherman Alexie’s provocative collections of short stories. Reviews often seem limited to a string of adjectives—touching, funny, angry, passionate, bittersweet, tender, mysterious, magical, vivid and haunting. Real. Suffice to say that he is incredibly skilled at directing human emotions into words, which is no small feat considering most of us can’t even put our own thoughts into words, let alone good words. Really good words, as the case may be. Alexie is the master of the small moment: a wife watching her husband play basketball in the snow, a son meticulously purging his diabetic father’s house of hidden candy, a man standing in a phone booth with no one to call. He has an amazing ability to portray the rawness of people—their best and worst qualities all at once: the loving and the fighting, the cheating and the loyalty, the despair and the resilience of hope.
