Five Little Indians
Five Little IndiansMichelle Good
Buy on Amazon

Five Little Indians (2020)

Michelle Good

Others: Positive

WINNER: Canada Reads 2022 WINNER: Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction WINNER: Amazon First Novel Award WINNER: Kobo Emerging Author Prize Finalist: Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalist: Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Prize Finalist: BC & Yukon Book Prize Shortlist: Indigenous Voices Awards National Bestseller; A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year; A CBC Best Book of the Year; An Apple Best Book of the Year; A Kobo Best Book of the Year; An Indigo Best Book of the Year Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission. Fuelled by rage and furious with God, Clara finds her way into the dangerous, highly charged world of the American Indian Movement. Maisie internalizes her pain and continually places herself in dangerous situations. Famous for his daring escapes from the school, Kenny can’t stop running and moves restlessly from job to job—through fishing grounds, orchards and logging camps—trying to outrun his memories and his addiction. Lucy finds peace in motherhood and nurtures a secret compulsive disorder as she waits for Kenny to return to the life they once hoped to share together. After almost beating one of his tormentors to death, Howie serves time in prison, then tries once again to re-enter society and begin life anew. With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.

ISBN:
9798885797061
Length:
304 pages

Genres: historical fiction, literary fiction

Lists: …

Similar books

1 of 6
  • Lion Women of Tehran

    Marjan Kamali

    2024 · 336 pages · 8 reviews

    Others: Positive

    In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing her and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of having a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.” But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. As Ellie enjoys her new popularity at the best girls’ high school in Iran, her memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, Homa's sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives. Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences. Written with Marjan Kamali's signature prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transform our lives.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    Also historical fiction and literary fiction
    61%
    On 2 of the same lists
    29%
    BooksandLala loved both
    10%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • In Memoriam

    Alice Winn

    2023 · 400 pages · 6 reviews

    Others: Overwhelmingly positive

    A haunting, virtuosic debut novel about two young men who fall in love during a time of war. It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting. Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle--an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood--without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. To Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next. An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    Also historical fiction and literary fiction
    65%
    On 2 of the same lists
    24%
    BooksandLala loved both
    11%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

    Elif Şafak

    2019 · 320 pages · 5 reviews

    Others: Overwhelmingly positive

    'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore...' For Leila, each minute after her death recalls a sensuous memory: spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for son; bubbling vats of lemon and sugar to wax women's legs while men are at prayer; the cardamom coffee she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each fading memory brings back the friends she made in her bittersweet life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her . . .

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    Also historical fiction and literary fiction
    70%
    On 2 of the same lists
    18%
    BooksandLala loved both
    12%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • The Underground Railroad

    Colson Whitehead

    2000 · 321 pages · 9 reviews

    Others: Leaning positive

    Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    Also historical fiction and literary fiction
    75%
    On 2 of the same lists
    13%
    BooksandLala loved both
    12%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • 13 ways of looking at a fat girl

    Mona Awad

    2016 · 256 pages · 1 review

    Others: Positive

    Follows Lizzie, a young woman growing up in Mississauga, as she fights her way from fat to thin, but who still, even as a married adult woman, sees herself as a fat girl.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    49%
    Also literary fiction
    38%
    BooksandLala loved both
    13%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • Homegoing

    Yaa Gyasi

    2016 · 320 pages · 16 reviews

    Others: Overwhelmingly positive

    Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, who are half-sisters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is held captive in the dungeons below. Subsequent chapters follow their children and following generations. The novel was selected in 2016 for the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017. It received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for 2017, an American Book Award, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    Also historical fiction and literary fiction
    68%
    On 2 of the same lists
    19%
    Similar descriptions
    13%
    Personalize your recommendations

Reviews1