Maisie had gone home after she was released. Maisie, for example, seems to have it all together when another survivor, Lucy, arrives at her door.

The only thing they really have is trauma and that follows them throughout their lives.Įach of these five characters has a different experience once they are away from the school. They are without skills, without family and really, without an education. The majority of the book follows these five characters after they’ve left the school, their lives intersecting as they try to make sense of a world they know next to nothing about. The novel doesn’t spend much time at the school itself, but we learn enough to see how Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie suffer at the hands of the priest and the nuns, particularly Sister Mary. Five Little Indians, by Canadian lawyer and first time novelist Michelle Good, won the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Amazon First Novel prize and the book was well-reviewed.Īnd I am not going to crap all over it because there were some things I did like about the book, which follows five people who were sent to residential school as children and then were either released or escaped into 1960s Vancouver. I had the same problem with The Nickel Boys. It’s tough to review a book written by an Indigenous author about an important subject (residential schools and their traumatic legacy) and not sound like an asshole when you don’t love it.

Author michelle good