"The Round House"

[fiefoe]

It's been a long time since I read some novel in the voice of a male teenager. Louise Erdrich is a good educator disguised as a novelist.

• Even now, I wonder at the steepness of my focus. I wedged my iron fork close as I could along the length of the twig-like sprout. Each little tree required its own singular strategy.
• the tedious Coutts line—responsible, upright, even offhandedly heroic men who drank quietly, smoked an occasional cigar, drove a sensible car, and only showed their mettle by marrying smarter women.
• We could be jolted into a fresh awareness of how we valued the sanctity of small routine.
• My father had insisted that they each take a statement from my mother because it wasn’t clear where the crime had been committed—on state or tribal land—or who had committed it—an Indian or a non-Indian.
• He told me that the stone was one of those found at the base of a lightning-struck tree, that it was sacred. A thunderbird egg,
• In TNG we weren’t skinny, picked on, poor, motherless, or scared. We were cool because no one else knew what we were talking about.
• a book like Hawaii, by James Michener, where he might learn interesting but ultimately useless tips on Polynesian foreplay
• There was that added weight of being a surprise to my mother and father, and the surging hopes that implied.
• In other words, being an Indian is in some ways a tangle of red tape.
• He swallowed once, twice. I was aghast at his strength of mind.
• the identity of the man whose act had nearly severed my mother’s spirit from her body.
• I was flooded by a slow leak of dismay. / It was a lofty June morning.
• small-time hypocrites, who may in special cases be capable of monstrous acts if given the chance.
• We put our bikes down. Avoiding one another’s eyes, we mumbled something about going off to take a piss and each went off alone and in three minutes relieved ourselves of all those
• We switched back. But I still believe that if it would have helped me, Cappy would have kept on walking in my tight old shoes.
• I had entered that furrow of remorse—planted with the seeds of resentment—peculiar to young men.
• You gave me life, I said. That’s how it’s supposed to work. So let me do what I want with it!