Little by David Treuer

Little

David Treuer

The child Little is dead, gradually the various narrators tell a strange and confusing story. The few inhabitants of Poverty, a housing tract on an Indian reservation in Minnesota, all have secrets which are gradually revealed but not explained. The bleakness of the reservation itself and of the past and present lives of the people living there comes over in a powerful way.

Extract
The grave we dug for my brother Little remained empty even after we filled it back in. And nobody was going to admit it. Everyone at the housing tract we called Poverty avoided the bare fact, the empty grave. Tucked back up in the woods, Poverty had no witness, and since there were only seven of us living in the two remaining houses that hadn't been gutted or broken, we had no one to explain it all to. We had no one to hand it to, fact by fact. So, even without the body, everything remained the same.
Parallels
  • Skin and Bone by Gareth Creer
  • Tracks by Louise Erdrich
  • The Famished Road by Ben Okri