NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ, Native American author Morgan Talty bursts onto the literary radar bigtime

NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ: Stories
MORGAN TALTY
Tin House Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, American Academy of Arts & Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, The New England Book Award, and the National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree

A Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Chautauqua Prize 2023, and Barnes & Noble Discover Book Prize

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, NPR, Esquire, Oprah Daily, and more

Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.

In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s projects the past onto her grandson; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.

A collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, Night of the Living Rez is an unforgettable portrayal of an Indigenous community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When a new voice speaks in a jaded crowd, it feels like being next to a rocket launch does. The sound is so loud, so intense, its pressure unbalances your legs and knocks you back on your heels.

Morgan Talty, laddies and gentlewomen. From the first story, where we're confronted with cultural touchstones not in upper-class white peoples' frames of reference, we're in assured hands...the limning of the setting, the colors of the relationship dynamics, the milieu, all in three paragraphs...and challenged to accept the entire package as it is.

"Fucking bullshit, fucking goddamn winter, what the fuck."
I laughed.
"It ain't funny, Dee."
"Look," I said. "Do you want me to cut my braid too?"

I shall, comme d'habitude, use the Bryce Method to assess the stories one-by-one.


Burn is the story I quoted above. A short, sharp shock, a shot across the bow of your luxury literary yacht, a foghorn on a sunny cruise. Disorienting by design, this is your chance to return to familiar shores.

I didn't. 5 impressed stars

In a Jar follows David studying his fractured family as it re-forms in unfamiliar ways. His much older sister, first an absence, then a hard sharp corner; his Mumma, inscrutable to kid-eyed David, touchy and strange; Frick, a man new to David and in a place his abandoned father once didn't want.

All the surprise in this concatenated chain of beings comes from knockings in walls, from jars of ill will, from refrigerated poisons ingested through other mouths. 5 more stars

Get Me Some Medicine follows low-life Fellis...the one talking to Dee in the quote all the way above...as he and Dee scrape the bottom of the barrel, drain the butt-end-filled last can of beer, and do themselves no good whatever doing it.

You can't save people. Nor should you, after a while, try. I don't think these boys, these pushing-thirty boys, can be saved. And neither do they. Dee is, at the very least, possessed of glimmers of self-awareness; Fellis, none. 4*

Food for the Common Cold shakes the ugly bits you never tell your partner loose. David, eleven now, can't quite grasp why Frick is so angry; Mumma can't tell him, he's too young; his Dad's far away and shut out like always; so it festers and seethes, finally David lances the boil out of fear for his mother, and out it all oozes for everyone to see, smell, and finally clean up.

Leaving David sick with, what, a cold? A cloggy, soggy cold? Maybe, maybe more. 4.5*

In a Field of Stray Caterpillars gets useless shitty Fellis even deeper into the badness, as he's now got Dee driving him home from his ECT treatments then spending the night there...and Dee's got a white woman on the line, knowing there's never going to be a good ending to that story, still running from what he knows he needs to do by using Fellis.

And this night, the one we're joining the boys to live through, is in the midst of a major mating season overload. The reek of the rotting animals mirrors Fellis and Dee's vacuity by filling the world with a passing stink that won't even result in better-nourished weeds. Fellis is so far gone the nurses are taking about putting a port in him so they don't have to hunt for a vein when they need to fry him with ECT.

How perfect. 5*

The Blessing Tobacco is a family...David's family, now with his much-older sister home...coming to terms with the end of an elder's life, when her body will not die at the same rate as her mind. It's just terrible and painful and all folded in with each others' craziness, fear, and anger.

Outliving your mind is a terrible curse. Outliving your family? Oh. It's scalding water on an icy windshield. 5*

Safe Harbor isn't...when is it ever? How do you ever know when you're going to have that moment of final fear? The one that changes your orientation in the world, the one where you are not the same person between seconds? David becoming Dee doesn't happen in front of us. But happen it does and we don't know him one speck better than before. 5*

Smokes Last brings me face-to-face with one of my most beloathèd addictions: cigarettes. I despise smokers. They reek, they're so unbelievably selfish, taking up all the air in a room and then flinging the leftover chunk of spit-soaked stinking garbage wherever and however it suits them, slowly drowning in the phlegm they hack onto streets and sidewalks for other people to deal with.

And here's fourteen-year-old David shovin' one into his mouth, "just suck a cock! it tastes better and at least somebody's happy!" I want to (maybe did) shout at him. He and his buds out bein' hooligans, beatin' each other up, chuckin' rocks...kids are so much the same everywhere.

Growing up. Not getting any guidance. No wonder what happens happened. 4*

Half-Life is the sharp part of the descent. It's harrowing and appalling and brutally bitterly honest. 4.5*

Earth, Speak is rock bottom. Harrowing. 5*

Night of the Living Rez would've been more palatable if it'd been zombies, or pugwagees; instead it was all over the fucking TV because of course it was and, if it'd been a white woman, it would've been self defense. 5 appalled stars

The Name Means Thunder burns in my head. The sheer horror of what happens when you can't undo a deed. The never-ending awfulness of life's worst moments defining you, charting your course. Too many undone deeds that lead to a done one. The worst of it is: you can't not see it in every moment of every awful undone deed. 5*

Morgan Talty's debut. Can you even imagine having this in you and no way for it to come out that won't change...everything.