2016 #1: Flight (Sherman Alexie)

Flight by Sherman Alexie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Three pages in, I was prepared not to like this book. It had all the indications of being a Catcher In The Rye-type novel, and I have no great love for that book. I stuck with it, however, and soon I realized that Alexie had a far different story to tell that was much larger than the angst of his teenage protagonist, Zits. He keeps it edgy without being obnoxious, and the questions that the book invokes are never fully answered but you realize at the end that it matters not. Here is an author that understands that violence is perhaps a universal potential that we conveniently put in racial and ethnic boxes when it suits us to think better of ourselves. Fantastic book!