Indians on Vacation / Thomas King

 

Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So we're in Prague…

This becomes the tag line of the book, much as Kurt Vonnegut used ”So it goes.” This is not going to be my favourite among King's books, but since it's one of the last ones (if you believe him), I had to read it. The last two interviews of the author that I've heard, he claims to be done writing. Maybe something will inspire a new book. I can hope.

King mines his own life experience for details of this novel. The narrator, Bird, is a man of Cherokee and Greek heritage, as King is. King's wife, Helen, is fond of travel just like Mimi and King is grumpy about it just like Bird. While traveling in Europe, King and his wife encountered a scene with refugees as described in the book. I wonder if that travel experience didn't form the seed of this novel.

”Nothing,” said Mimi. “We did nothing. Oh, we were sympathetic and we were outraged, but we didn't do anything.”
“We thought about it.”

And that's the rub, isn't it? There are all these intractable problems in the world and what are we as individuals supposed to do about them? This is what contributes to Bird's demons of depression and self-loathing that follow him around, ready to ruin any part of any day. Especially these days, when more residential school locations are being scanned in search of unmarked graves, that's how many of us are feeling. I just can't believe that people still claim to be surprised by these findings. Have they not been paying attention for the last several decades? Truth & Reconciliation Commission, anyone?

I think we must come to the same conclusions as Bird does—what we do may not change the world, but it changes us, mostly for the better.



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