The Insufficiency of Maps

Maintaining the tone of a child writing without sounding precious or contrived saves this author's work of fiction from joining the glut of thinly-veiled confessional memoirs in my trash bin. Without making the artistry of her novel distractingly evident, Pierce presents what appears to be a rough coming-of-age story. Extrapolated, it could well be the charting of any cathartic moment of disillusionment and realization. In the particular, the author clearly pays homage to her roots with great love and offers us a glimpse into a world on our shared continent yet an ocean's divide away economically. Held together by its own traditions, this world is further cemented by difficult universals of family and compassion. The end is a bit of a cop-out after a novel whose overall tone is refreshingly honest and ambivalent, but overall it's not half-sugary. Gripping, even.

Pierce shows us the gritty struggles of mid-twentieth century Native Americans. Untreated illnesses, extreme poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence scars the life of young Alice. Alice is immune to her problems, often playing along with her mother's delusions and paranoia. But, she's not immune to her heritage. For nearly nine years, Alice attempts to map her life within the context of other maps. Maps are her passion, so is her heritage. She just wants to find out who she really is. We see other characters, even her white foster family, struggle with their identities. Lesser character Sister Joanne, strict Catholic nun, cannot stand to see stereotypical portryals of Native Americans. Pierce does a great job of putting together Native American life in the late 1960s- 1970s. The American Indian Movement visits Yuma, where Inez's dialogue with Alice shows us that even such "progressives" aren't sure what they want. This book will leave you with chills! You will analyze and overanalyze the choices of each character in the story. You may even gag or wince when you read about untreated fungal infections, horrific B.O., alcohol breath, etc. And no matter how weirded out or grossed out you are, you'll want to keep reading!

Nora Pierce's The Insufficiency of Maps is great literature. In a time when most American fiction is either maudlin, wishy-washy or navel gazing, Pierce's writing presents with wonderful clarity the story of a young girl and her mother. The writing reminds me of the giants of American literature - F. Scott Fitzgerald in particular - in its ability to depict a life and its story with a minimum of words. Nothing is lacking in this novel, the presentation and writing is lean and spare as is Alice's life. Alice's life is disrupted by foster care and this disruption is echoed in the more episodic nature of the latter part of the book. Moreover, this stripped down style gives the book far more emotional weight - the result is a poignant, sad but not tragic (in my view) book about a young Indian girl's life, from reservation to the wider world and back again. Highly recommended.

Pierce's finesse in relaying the landscape of a child's life through the delicate filter of her young perspective is brilliant. It's terribly challenging to write a child's first person point of view in an adult work, and Pierce accomplishes it masterfully. Through this naive lens the author gives tremendous insight into cultural wealth and poverty, mental illness and the soaring imagination inextricably tied to it, as well as the emotional hurdles of a child displaced by virtually everyone. What stability little Alice lacks in family and tribe Pierce returns to her tenfold with a compassionate and responsive audience.

A waif named Alice carries us through losses of family, culture and place to gradually find her identity. Despite continual hardships and suffering, the narrative voice remains clear and compelling throughout, dispensing with sentimentality as unnecessary baggage. This is beautifully told prose, as spare as the scenery it inhabits - all the more powerful when it flowers into poetic imagery. Read.