The Round House

It sometimes happens that I'll buy a book but I don't get around to reading it until weeks or even months later. This was the case with Louise Erdrich's The Round House which as been sitting at the bottom of my wardrobe for ages -- I actually thought it was a YA book until I pulled it out and realised it was an adult novel.

I guess the spur for finally reading The Round House was that I've been watching a terrific crime series on SBS called Dark Winds, which is also set on a Native American reservation, in this case Navajo, while The Round House is set on Chippewa land. This has sparked a hitherto dormant interest in Native American culture, and I guess I'm intrigued to see if there are any parallels between Australia's First Nations peoples and the indigenous population of a different country. Certainly the history of dispossession, attempted genocide and oppression is similar, but so is the toughness and the survival of culture and spiritual beliefs and ceremony.

The Round House is such a fantastic, powerful novel, narrated from the point of view of 13 year old Joe (coincidentally also the name of the main character in Dark Winds), whose mother is brutally attacked in the first few pages of the book. This event is the catalyst for Joe's coming of age, his learning about the history of his community, and his realisation of the double standards of white and Indian justice (another recurring theme in Dark Winds). This is a beautifully written and moving story, sometimes funny, often dark, and I'm so glad that I finally picked it up off the bottom of the wardrobe.