Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Throughout the novel, I was supremely impressed with the writing style by Sherman Alexie. There were so many metaphors and similes that were so powerful sometimes that I had to stop and re-read the sentence because I was blown away by the writing. As far as character development goes, I think that we really see Junior's development more so than any other character, which makes sense given he is the main character. I would have liked to see some other characters developed a little bit better though. Even the characters closest to Junior were developed only to a certain extent. Rowdy, for instance, is a character we know not very much about, and I would argue that we learn the most about him at the end of the novel when him and Junior are climbing the tree in the flashback.

As far as what the text leaves out, I'm sort of at a loss. I feel like there were a lot of different topics covered: Poverty; racial relations; death; alcoholism. There are many more topics, and even more themes, so I feel like Alexie did a great job of weaving all of them throughout the novel. This book really gave me a lot of insight into an Indian reservation--something I am admittedly rather ignorant on.

I think that this text is a lot like John Green's books in that they seem to position adolescents in a very realistic manner. It doesn't show them as particularly strong, or weak--rather, it positions them as survivors. Junior had to experience a lot of death in this novel, and I know that a lot of that was based on Alexie's real life. I think he did an incredible job of providing us with a realistic look into the life of a young Native-American living on a "rez".  I think this book would definitely appeal to young adults because it is humorous and it doesn't skirt around one of the most important issues that young adults face--death. It is also crude enough to appeal to high-schoolers, in my opinion.

Overall, I would have to give this book an A+. Even though some of the characters were a bit under developed, the writing style and soul-rending insight into death make this novel on of my new favorite books. I did not read this book in high school like a lot of other people in the class seem to have, but it is definitely a novel I think that I will re-read at some point. This book also made me not want to touch alcohol ever again, which is probably something that would be good to teach to high-schoolers, if only to delay them from drinking until they are a legal age.