But, I just think books should be enjoyable to read and this one wasn’t.A t the beginning of The Round House, the novel's 13-year-old narrator, Joe, is helping his father pry out tree seedlings that have lodged in the cement-block foundation of his family's house. Maybe I’m just too dense to pick up on all the pieces of a VERY subtly communicated plot…or maybe I’m an outlier when it comes to readers of The Round House and the National Book Foundation judges (esteemed members of the “literary community” who select the Award winners). I also tried to figure out why Joe’s friends blended together in my head and realized that no one in the book has a distinct way of talking, making it easier to get a feel for their personalities…in fact, there is very little “dialogue” in the book at all. The Afterword would have better served readers as a Prologue or Foreword.
In fact, I couldn’t figure out why the story was even set on an Indian reservation or included seemingly arbitrary interjections of Indian folklore until I read the Afterword to the book. The overall premise (which had the potential to be interesting) revolves around how hard it is to arrest and convict a rapist on an Indian reservation due to an intricate web of Indian tribal and Federal law.īut all the strings of the story were so subtle and loosely woven together that, when I got to the end, I still didn’t know enough about some of the key pieces of the rape case or the ins and outs of the law to make sense of things. The Round House won the National Book Award this year and received mostly 5 star reviews from Amazon readers, but I thought it was a poorly constructed story that slowly plodded along. Joe, the thirteen year old son of a woman raped on an Indian reservation in North Dakota, and his three friends, try to unravel what happened to Joe’s mother. The Ultimate List of Family Drama Books.16 Character-Driven Novels I Couldn’t Put Down.Books That Would Make Great Gifts for Moms.Book Club Recommendations That Are Great for Summer.Best Books of 2012 / Holiday Gift Guide.Best Books of 2013 / Holiday Gift Guide.
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