Shoot the Buffalo

What can you say about Matt Briggs? This book is fantastic. It reminds one of Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Hansel and Gretyl. What happens in the woods? Does the little girl meet a wolf or an uncle? She doesn't meet a mother. Read this book to find out more.

Early in "Shoot the Buffalo," a little girl dies due to parental neglect, but her brother blames himself. As a result, his childhood is also stolen from him. Without trustworthy parents to shelter him, Aldous searches for meaning in highly structured groups like the Boy Scouts and eventually, the Army. His story reminded me of the autobiographical struggles of author Tobias Woolf as told in "This Boy's Life" and "The Barracks Thief." In both cases the highly regimented, uniform-wearing organizations are just as stressful for the narrator as the bad parenting of earlier years. The spirit struggles to survive in unfriendly conditions. "Shoot the Buffalo" also made me think of another novel set in Washington state, Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping." That novel is also narrated by a child who has unconventional parenting and is haunted by the memory of a beloved sibling. Both Briggs and Robinson evoke the green, damp, forested Washington landscape and see it as a place of dread as well as a place of beauty. Briggs' writing explores physical and psychological landscapes with equal intensity.