Thomas King‘s novel Running Water is definitely one of the stranger books I’ve had the pleasure to read. It is funny in disjointed bits, like staccato flashes of stroboscopic light. However, the book examines the plight of the Native American in ways that would be simply too depressing without the constant assault of humour.
We have an omniscient deity that tries over and over again to get it right, and by right we mean the whole shebang, cosmos, universe, whatever. We also have the four horsemen from Christian myth, except they’re named Hawkeye, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe and the Lone Ranger. We have a billion-dollar dam held up by the demands of the reserve.
One caveat: the disjointed clippings make it easy to lose track of certain plotlines at times, or maybe my mind just wandered more easily during this book. The book will make you laugh out loud at times, so maybe it’s all worth it in the end.
iBSN: 0-00-648513-8