Naturally, there is a lot of anger in ‘Five little indians.’ One character is driven by revenge – what if you could hunt down your tormentor in later life? Others channel their anger through activism, taking up the struggle. I can’t imagine the impact on the families of having their children taken from them. I thought of it when one of the characters returns to his mother, only to find she is a shell of a woman. There’s a line in a Bob Dylan song, Mississippi, where he says you can go back, but you can’t go back all the way. They only have each other to turn to, because who else can understand? And of course they are receiving no help. In the words of Bruce Springsteen, one of the characters is born to run, but you can’t out run your inner demons. They are trapped in a cycle of self-hate, doomed to never escape. For some of the characters, their ways of coping are dysfunctional, and it consumes them. This book is very much about survival, and the different mechanisms for coping that humans have. SurvivorsĮach chapter moves back and forth between the survivors as they get older, and we see how they cope with life. Part of the problem was that I was listening to the audiobook, and there seemed to be little distinction between the characters voices, and the narrative jumped back and forth a lot. I struggled initially with the beginning of the novel, set in the residential school. They are the survivors.īeing Irish, I am of course aware of the history of abuse that went on in Educational settings over the years in this country, usually at the hands of priests and christian brothers, so it many ways it was a sadly familiar story. The book follows the five as they attempt to rebuild their lives in Vancouver, with varying degrees of success – Kenny, Howie, Clara, Maisie and Lucy. We meet them when they are young, ripped away from their families and now at the mercy of the Canadian Indian residential school system and it’s cruelties. The ‘five little Indians’ in question are indigenous First Nation children placed in residential care in 1960’s Canada.

Five little indians by michelle good