There There by Tommy Orange Book review

 

There There by Tommy Orange Book review 

There There by Tommy Orange. I read this book in June and I loved it so, so much. It is definitely one of my favorite books that I've read so far this year. So I knew I wanted to do an individual review for this book for you guys because it deserves it. 

There There is a literary fiction book that has been kind of all the buzz if you follow a lot of like literary fiction readers and bloggers and writers and whatnot and it is for good reason. 

It's a multi-generational novel and you are following 12 different characters all of whom are of Native American descent. It mainly takes place in and around the Oakland, California area. You follow these twelve characters as they all sort of converge on the big Oakland powwow that is going to be happening. 

So I'm not really going to do a real detailed plot synopsis or go over like all of the characters in a whole lot of detail because, like most literary fiction books, while there is a plot, the plot isn't really the main point of the book. And in fact, I would say the plot is probably the weakest part of the book.

The strongest part of this book is the writing. Tommy Orange is an amazing writer. This is a debut novel and holy cow this is so, so well done. Tommy orange is going to be an author that I will be keeping my eye on in the future. 

This book is simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking and makes you question a lot of things about the United States and the way that you look at other people and even the way that you look at yourself. 

For a handful of characters in this book, and I would maybe even make the argument for all the characters in this book, this is a lot about what it means to be a Native American in the United States today, in modern day. 

One of the things that one of the character touches on quite a bit is about how people have very specific images in their head of what it means to be a Native American. 

And how if you grow up like in a major city away from like Indian reservations and things like that, that's not really what it means to be a Native American for you. 

And so there are questions asked in here about what it means to be a Native American then if you don't necessarily grow up around the culture or the people in the way that maybe your parents or grandparents did. 

Can you still call yourself Native American if there are certain parts of your culture that you have either rejected personally or that just never got passed down to you? 

I think that a lot of the questions that are asked in here, though while it is centered around the Native American experience, it's very universal in terms of anyone who maybe grows up either a descendent from a very strong culture or maybe like is a second or third generation immigrant in the United States and has slightly more of a detachment from that culture that their parents or grandparents came from. 

And so one of the things I really, really enjoyed about this book is just that idea and exploration for these characters and them figuring out sort of on their own terms how and why they consider themselves to be Native American and the things they take pride in and the things that they hold on to and things like that.

You may have heard me mention this before, but in general I'm someone who usually doesn't like books that have multiple perspectives. And with 12 characters and a not very long book you would think that this would be a book that I had a hard time with. 

But one of the things about this book is that a lot of these characters are sort of interconnected. So you're getting that periphery information about characters in other chapters from other perspectives. 

It reminded me a lot of homegoing in that way of how like even though you're switching perspectives in every chapter, you get information that are passed through the generations. 

And while this isn't structured in the exact same way as homegoing, that sort of like interconnectedness of all of the characters adds to the depths of everyone even though you may not be in their point of view for that chapter. 

The one tip I would say while reading this book is to maybe keep some sort of like family tree or character map or even just a piece of paper where you keep little notes because there's a lot of different threads and connections in this book. 

And while you can get by without following it super, super closely, especially towards the end of the book it becomes a little bit more helpful to remember everyone's connection to each other. 

Since they all are converging on this powwow as you can imagine a lot of different characters start interacting with each other. Remembering all of those different connections really does become helpful. Also towards the end of the book the action really picks up significantly. 

You're going through chapters and points of views much faster and so you don't have as much time to sort of get acclimated and remember all the connections. So having sort of like a cheat sheet this would be really helpful. 

And speaking of the ending, I think that the ending personally was the weakest part of the story for me. Like I said, the plot is sort of like the weak point of this book as a whole, in my opinion. 

Things, like I said, move really, really quickly at the end. And so whenever plots sort of like speed up like that I feel slightly disoriented. And a lot of the parts that I really loved in this book are the more slow-paced passages that let you really ruminate on these ideas that the characters are bringing up.

So when the plot picks up like that and it's sort of like summing everything up or like making these final conclusions or whatever you want to call it, that's the point when it started to lose me a little bit. So that's why it didn't end up being a five-star read for me.

It was so very close. It's probably like a 4.5 star if I'm being completely honest. This book is 100% worth reading, especially if you're someone who enjoys literary fiction.

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 THANK YOU SO MUCH