Critical Essay | Critical Review by Sybil S. Steinberg

SOURCE: A review of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 240, No. 29, July 19, 1993, p. 235.

In the following review of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the critic lauds Alexie's short stories as exemplary products of the author's potent imagination.

Known primarily as a poet, [Sherman] Alexie (Old Shirts and New Skins), a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, offers [in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven] 22 extremely fine short stories, all set on or around the Spokane reservation in Washington state. Characters flow from one tale to the next; many involve Victor, who grows from a small child watching relatives fight during a New Year's Eve party ("Every Little Hurricane") to a dissolute man sitting on his broken-down porch with a friend, watching life pass him by ("The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore")....
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