Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

So Many Experiences and Stories All Tied into One

There There by Tommy Orange

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This novel ended up on my to-read list last year after it was a Cannonball featured review. I can definitely understand why so many have spoken so highly of it, and am sure this won’t be the last we hear of Tommy Orange in the years to come. While presented as one complete novel of converging stories, There There reads almost like a collection of short stories, with different threads connecting each of the characters: that is, until everything comes to a head at the […]

“They took everything and ground it down to dust as fine as gunpowder, they fired their guns into the air in victory and the strays flew out into the nothingness of histories written wrong and meant to be forgotten. Stray bullets and consequences are landing on our unsuspecting bodies even now.” #CBRBingo – Orange

There There by Tommy Orange

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I have complained about literary fiction before, and I will complain about it again. But this book is a great example of the genre, in part because Tommy Orange is so good at his craft (this is a debut!!), but I think also because he is an author that provides a voice that is marginalized. He has things to say. The book itself is seeking (in part) to reckon with the idea of the modern Indian, the Urban Indian, and it does so with not […]

There, There – Good, but bleak, debut novel

There There by Tommy Orange

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I learned of this new (summer 2018) book in a recent podcast episode of Literary Disco, but it has made an impression having received props (technical term) from a bajillion publications, such as The Washington Post, NPR, Time, O, The Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, GQ, The Dallas Morning News, Buzzfeed, BookPage, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews. Suffice it to say, Mr Orange was on a lot of lists for his debut novel. I found it to be a little […]

“Stray bullets and consequences are landing on our unsuspecting bodies even now.“

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There There is an innovative and engrossing first novel from Native American writer Tommy Orange. Through his multiple character narration, he explores the question of what it means to be an “urban Indian” in the US. The title There There comes from a Gertrude Stein quote that is often taken out of context and misunderstood, much like Native Americans. In referring to Oakland, California, where Stein grew up and where the action of There There takes place, Stein wrote that there was no there there […]

Opal likes numbers. Numbers are consistent. You can count on them. But for Opal, certain numbers are good and others are bad.

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There’s some pretty strong connections between this novel and some of the novels of Louise Erdrich, especially Plague of Doves, LaRose, and The Round House. For one, this novel references Louise Erdrich, and for two, the factured structure and the myriad narrative voices relating the subject matter. If I had to make a guess, this will be the best book from 2018 I read in 2018…if not the very best, one of the very best. You can tell from the get-go that this is a […]



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