Sufferance / Thomas King

 

Sufferance: A Novel by Thomas King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thomas King recently claimed that this is his final novel. If that's true (and I have no reason to doubt him) I am sad, but he is certainly going out with a bang. I loved this book. It reminded me a lot of his earlier work The Back of the Turtle and in some ways of his Thumps DreadfulWater mystery series. I have loved all of those books.

Jeremiah is a great narrator, which is kind of hilarious as he refuses to speak. Like Gabriel, from The Back of the Turtle, he is fleeing corporate America and has ended up back on his ancestral reserve. As usual, King creates a quirky cast of characters to fill the small community. No matter where Jeremiah goes to be alone, someone tracks him down. As part of his final package when he left his corporate job, he was awarded the ownership of the residential school of his mother's reserve. He's been living there, creating rock markers for the cemetery, with only an unnamed cat for company. And the crows.

King seems to have a fondness for cats. In Thumps DreadfulWater’s life, there was Freeway. As more and more people start taking a meddling interest in Jeremiah’s life, this feline gets christened Pancakes. And like Thumps, Jeremiah has his habitual rounds of town, breakfast here, coffee there, home for a nap, work in the graveyard. King manages to comment on the global economy and the immorality of excessive wealth while also examining issues closer to home—lack of clean water and proper sanitation on reserves, mould in homes, unmarked graves behind residential schools, unreliable politicians, lack of affordable housing. It is all just part of the wall paper, while Jeremiah can go stay in the hotel care of his former employer when the residential school gets too crowded.

The crows are the star of the show. They have three simple questions: can we steal it? Can we eat it? Can we shit on it? As Jeremiah observes, not very different from capitalists. They are the chorus to this Greek tragedy (and King does have Greek ancestry).

Mr. King, thank you for hours of reading pleasure. I confess that I hope something else will be the piece of grit that causes you to write another pearl of a novel, but I will be thankful for what you have given us.


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