In his new funny novel. Indians are having fun, author Thomas King, of Cherokee descent, depicts an elderly couple traveling from Canada to travel to Europe. If the bubbly Mimi is determined to follow in the footsteps of an ancestor who once visited Prague, then the Angry Bird is more or less stuck with his demons, so present that they have names.
“Maybe you should make some friends.” “Maybe you'll spend less time with your demons,” Mimi tells her lover, a Greek and Cherokee photojournalist. During their stay in the Czech Republic, the duo hopes to find a bag of family souvenirs that Uncle Leroy may have lost there a hundred years ago. However, Byrd's torments continue to resurface in this endeavor.
The novel's protagonist has a character named “Eugene” who represents self-loathing, as is the case with “all the native people of North America,” as Mimi's mother, Bernie, once said. It was the latter, a Blackfoot from Alberta, who instilled in the couple the desire to follow in the footsteps of their ancestor Leroy, who had left his reserve in Canada to cross the Old Continent.
The Ontario novelist, to whom we are especially indebted The awkward Indian (2014), once again succeeds in tackling serious themes, such as intergenerational trauma, while filling its story with quips worthy of a comedian.
Catherine Ego, who translated this work from English to French, does justice to Thomas King's effective writing. As usual, the writer brings together rhythmic dialogues featuring a group of likable, but sometimes disaffected, characters.
Byrd, who is in pain in body as well as in spirit, constantly offers his strange ideas about the inconveniences involved in travel. “You have to be immortal to eat pizza,” he muses, sitting at a table in a Czech restaurant where young people stuff themselves without fear that processed meat will clog their arteries.
Running after dead or missing people
with Indians are having funThomas King delivers a Road novel Crazy as the geographical and time jumps between Canada, the United States, Greece, Hungary and the Czech Republic multiply.
Throughout his wanderings to find Uncle Leroy, but also his father, Bird asks himself this question: “How do I spend my time chasing dead or missing men?”
However, throughout their adventures, the pair suffer a major blow when they encounter a crowd of refugees at a Hungarian train station. Then new questions arise. “How many times have we turned a blind eye to injustice? Have we turned a blind eye to bigotry?” Bird asks about his trip to this continent.
The photojournalist also comes to regard Uncle Leroy as a refugee who fled the constraints of his conservatism and racism in Canada by going to Europe. He concludes that he was “dragged from one country and language to another, without a fixed address.”
