I learned to drive at the decrepit age of 17 from a woman named Synthia with acrylic nails and a biting description of my skill set. Her pedagogy was in shambles. She picked me up at my house, with a quivering 15-year-old boy in tow, and made me sit in the driver’s seat which was not really a place I was interested in sitting. I gritted my teeth through a six-way intersection and then white-knuckled it 5 mph down a narrow residential street with far too many labrador retrievers, vehicles, and onlookers for one unqualified driver to handle. Perhaps you’re thinking “what a triumphant story about a teen who, despite not believing in herself, does what most other teens accomplish handily: learns to drive.” You are wrong for thinking that, you insolent fool. I quit driver’s ed without completing my requisite 6 sessions, never took the driver’s test, and wouldn’t get my license for another 8 years.
In some stories, the narrative is an oily squid. It moves in one direction until you try and grab it, then it takes a sudden left turn in a way that Central Driving Academy would not approve of. The Night Watchman is squid central, baby, because I thought it was going to be about a woman’s sordid fate as a sexy swimming cow, but I was wrong (insolent fool). The story follows Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, a young Native American woman living on Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota, working in a jewelry plant, being a sharp and cutting female protagonist like a self-reliant Harriet the Spy. Harriet the Spy, who ate chocolate cake and milk AS A SNACK AFTER SCHOOL.*
Erdrich weaves the foul reeds of American history with triumphant personal narrative like a time-honored basketweaver. Her characters are gooey, feeling beings with deep appreciation and care for each other, stuck in the federal government’s villainous web. (I’m using the term “federal government” to be precise, not as a foaming-at-the-mouth Libertarian.) Some plot lines are driven by the protest of the 1953 “emancipation” bill, designed to boot Native Americans from the sliver of land they had left, but even these characters are defined by the people who love them and who they love in return.
This is a book that made me want to read more, which I was doing until the new season of Love Island came out. Alas. If only I had been watching Formula 1: Drive to Survive that would have been a fantastic call back to the opening anecdote. I guess we are truly at the whims of an unruly narrative.
*This ruined my childhood because literally try eating carrot sticks after you hear that this is within the realm of possibility.