March Book Recommendation:

Wandering Stars

written by Tommy Orange

Reviewed by Carlee Wilson

Tommy Orange is back with his much-anticipated second novel, Wandering Stars. Just like his debut novel There, There, Orange gives us a multitude of characters whose minds we explore as the novel tours the legacies of trauma passed through generations of one particular family and how these traumas impact the present. Like many other Indigenous novels before it, Wandering Stars includes the topics we know well in Indian Country (residential schools, addiction, loss of cultural connection, etc.) but the way Orange plays with point of view made this reader feel closer to the multitudinous emotions and thoughts experienced by his characters. 

I did find myself struggling to return to the book whenever I put it down as I wished the pace was quickened a bit more, but what kept me reading were the clever anecdotes that provided me with insight into my own human experiences. I also enjoyed how Orange blended real historical events into a timeline that each character unravels in their individual chapters.

Orange truly has a way with words that is both deeply cathartic and disturbingly poignant. Orange is able to define moments of our existence we haven’t consciously wrapped our heads around until there on the page. He is a master of language and, I’d argue, a writer’s writer as he’s proving his literary prowess with this follow-up to There, There. 

Hayu masi (many thanks) to Penguin Random House for the advanced copy of Wandering Stars.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Buy the book from Time Enough Books