Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

One thing I like about And Other Stories� new design is that you can read the first line right there on the cover, and we all know how key a first line is in fiction. For Fire Exit, it’s this:

I wanted the girl to know the truth. I wanted her to know who I was—who I really was—instead of a white man who had lived across from her all her life and watched her grow up on the other side of the river.

This is straight to the heart of the novel, and straight to the heart of what’s best about the novel: a dilemma of classically tragic dimensions. The narrator is a white man who grew up on a reservation with his stepfather; but he has no native blood and was required to leave at 18. The girl across the river is his daughter—but if that were known, she wouldn’t have enough native blood either (according to the Blood Quantum by which the Tribe decides who qualifies for membership), and she would be cast out in turn.

It’s a fascinating story based on the specifics of Native ancestry in North America, where a certain amount of Native blood is required (in contrast to policies towards Black Americans where a single drop was enough to denote Blackness). Choosing to frame this as a story in which a fairly hapless white man is the victim (the victim of the victim perhaps, as Native tribes struggle to define themselves, or what remains of themselves, after generations of erasure) is also a fascinating choice. I couldn’t have enjoyed the concept or the framing more; it’s the kind of story that leaves a lump in your throat before anything has even happened.

And the idea of blood is taken and played with throughout the book. The idea that all blood, spilled, looks the same, and indeed is the same, the differences being in the interpretation of it. The idea of inheritance as something desirable, but also something not (when it’s severe depression being passed down). The absurdity of any bureaucratic definition of belonging (two Native men from different tribes adopt a son, who is mixed-Native from two different tribes—which tribe should he belong to?).

Beyond its classical dilemma, it’s a story about belonging more broadly, and occasionally I got impatient here. I didn’t care much for the main subplot involving the protagonist’s mother. And I found the resolution a little� dare I say it, sappy. Which is a pity for a classic tragedy. But nonetheless, this was a rewarding read.