SOURCE: Gorra, Michael. “Hopeless Warriors.” London Review of Books 28, no. 9 (5 March 1998): 1.

In the following review, Gorra offers a negative assessment of Reservation Blues, focusing on Alexie's failure to blend humor with drama and his overly didactic tone.

In Indian Killer, Sherman Alexie's second novel, two members of the Anthropology Department at the University of Washington in Seattle exchange banalities in a parking lot:

‘Dr Mather!’ said the white man as he approached. ‘Dr Mather, it's me. It's Dr Faulkner.’

‘Good evening, Dr Faulkner. How are you?’

‘Fine, fine. How was your class?’

‘Well, I'm having trouble with a student. An Indian student, actually. She is very disruptive.’

This is not an exchange that I can imagine taking place in any car park on any American campus, where secretaries routinely address university presidents by their first names. Either Alexie doesn't know what he's writing about, or this is meant...