Review of FIVE LITTLE INDIANS by Michelle Good

 4 Stars

I’m a latecomer to this national bestseller which won the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, was on the longlist for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was on the shortlist for the 2020 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.  It has also been chosen for Canada Reads 2022. 

This book, which depicts life for five young people once they’ve left a residential school, should be read by all Canadians.  Left without skills, support of any type, and families, they struggle to come to terms with their pasts while trying to survive in a world for which they are woefully unprepared.  As the five connect over several decades, we see how they’ve been traumatized by their experiences.

Kenny yearns for a family, but he has difficulty maintaining a stable family life.  His restlessness suggests his trying to outrun his memories of the place that stole so much from him.  Lucy, who developed an obsessive compulsive disorder to help her cope, has a goal to become a nurse, though she has a number of obstacles to overcome.  Maisie suffered sexual abuse and that impacts her ability to have a healthy relationship with any man.  Feeling unworthy, she engages in self-destructive behaviour.  Clara has survivor guilt; she is haunted by a friend who didn’t survive at the school.  She becomes an activist working to help others, but when offered spiritual healing for herself, struggles because of remembered threats of eternal damnation for those who practiced non-Christian beliefs.  Howie’s anger gets the best of him and he spends years in prison.

Of course, it is not just the children that suffer.  Kenny manages to escape the school and returns home, but he discovers his mother is no longer the same person because her only child was wrenched from her.  In fact, the entire community has been devastated by the loss of its children.  The next generation is also impacted.  Though Kendra does not attend residential school, both of her parents did, and her relationship with her father suffers because of his personal demons. 

I appreciated that the actual abuse at the school is not directly shown.  Describing the abuses was not the author’s intention; her indirect references are sufficient for the reader to understand what the children endured.  Her focus is on showing the long-term impact of that emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.  The author also does not focus too much on the individual racism the five encountered once outside the school.

The subject matter is so important that I was disappointed that the literary quality is not always the best.  The dialogue often sounds flat and unnatural; I wondered if the simple prose and speech patterns are to reflect the grade school education of the five characters for whom English was second language.  There are sudden shifts in narration from third to first person.  Timelines are somewhat confusing; sometimes, little time passes between chapters whereas decades pass between others.  I listened to an audiobook so perhaps I missed something, but how can Kenny show Howie how to escape after he returns from an extended stay in the hospital when Kenny himself escapes the day Howie is taken to the hospital?

Though there are weaknesses in writing quality, I’m giving the book 4 stars because of the value of its subject matter.  I have no doubt that the author has realistically shown the legacy of residential schools.  For this reason, as I stated at the beginning, this is a book that all Canadians should read:  “The devastating legacy of the residential schools endures across generations of Indigenous families and belongs to a larger history of systemic racism, discrimination, and injustice that Indigenous peoples have endured and continue to face in Canada.”