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Night of the Living Rez
7 hours 6 minutes
How do the living come back to life?
Set in a Native community in Maine, 'Night of the Living Rez' is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and community bonds as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s projects the past onto her grandson, and thinks he is her dead brother come back to life; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.
In a collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, 'Night of the Living Rez' is an unforgettable portrayal of a Native community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction.
©2022 Morgan Talty (P)2022 Recorded Books
How do the living come back to life?
Set in a Native community in Maine, 'Night of the Living Rez' is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and community bonds as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s projects the past onto her grandson, and thinks he is her dead brother come back to life; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.
In a collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, 'Night of the Living Rez' is an unforgettable portrayal of a Native community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction.
©2022 Morgan Talty (P)2022 Recorded Books
8 pages, Audible Audio
First published July 5, 2022
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November 12, 2023
You ever finish a book and you're just like: oh.
Set in Maine on the Penobscot Indian Nation, the stories in Night of the Living Rez are a beautiful mosaic of intimacies that devastate in their intense, quiet, stunning sincerity. The language is gorgeous: the way Talty writes about rain and wind and fog and ghosts makes you feel as if they were rushing through the very seams of your clothes; the metaphors springing to life, demanding that all five senses be shaken awake.
Talty also has a deft hand with loss, and he is painstakingly attentive to what our damage does to us and what it makes us do, to ourselves and to one another. Reading this book, one feels that these stories are true, not in the sense that they are authentic or factual, but true in some deeper way to a lived experience. In the way that books that are willing to reveal themselves to the readers and reveal the readers to themselves feel true.
I really loved this book. I laughed reading it, and at times, I felt so oppressively sad I could not turn to the next page. There are 12 stories here, or 12 chapters, depending on how you decide to think about it. I don’t know if I can say what genre Night of the Living Rez decidedly belongs to. This is not a novel, and it’s not just a set of linked stories speculating on a shared constellation of themes. It is both—or maybe, neither. Night of the Living Rez holds us in the tension between novel and collection of stories. It’s a book presented in fragments, like a trail through the woods, but the whole it makes is complete, cohesive, and emotionally legible. If I reflect on it hard enough—I think there’s something here that speaks to wholeness in fragmentation. That a thing can be broken and still be loved in its totality.
The center of every story (or chapter) is this: that the intimate gut-deep agonies of generational trauma make their presence felt in everyday life in ways so irrefutable and physically inescapable they can rip us open, spread from one body to another and rip our families apart, rip our bodies apart, and that it takes so much love and patience and compassion to push beyond the impasse of the past and begin the long work of restoration and healing, of recreating ourselves and each other through annihilation, and it is work, make no mistake, and it can last a lifetime, with no guarantee of fruition.
But like Dodie Bellamy had hoped in her essay “On Becoming Undone”, there might just be “tenderness at the end of our undoing.” In this book, Talty writes the kind of bereft and damaged and angry that still leaves room for love. In these stories, there’s the fact of pain—all the harrowing minutiae of being alive where loss is always nearby—but there’s also the fact of love walking up unexpectedly under it. The fact of love within loss.
Ultimately, Night of the Living Rez is a reminder of the ineradicable power of tenderness, of caring for one another in an often less-than-caring world, of loving each other through pain, tentatively, brokenly, and into wholeness.
Set in Maine on the Penobscot Indian Nation, the stories in Night of the Living Rez are a beautiful mosaic of intimacies that devastate in their intense, quiet, stunning sincerity. The language is gorgeous: the way Talty writes about rain and wind and fog and ghosts makes you feel as if they were rushing through the very seams of your clothes; the metaphors springing to life, demanding that all five senses be shaken awake.
Talty also has a deft hand with loss, and he is painstakingly attentive to what our damage does to us and what it makes us do, to ourselves and to one another. Reading this book, one feels that these stories are true, not in the sense that they are authentic or factual, but true in some deeper way to a lived experience. In the way that books that are willing to reveal themselves to the readers and reveal the readers to themselves feel true.
I really loved this book. I laughed reading it, and at times, I felt so oppressively sad I could not turn to the next page. There are 12 stories here, or 12 chapters, depending on how you decide to think about it. I don’t know if I can say what genre Night of the Living Rez decidedly belongs to. This is not a novel, and it’s not just a set of linked stories speculating on a shared constellation of themes. It is both—or maybe, neither. Night of the Living Rez holds us in the tension between novel and collection of stories. It’s a book presented in fragments, like a trail through the woods, but the whole it makes is complete, cohesive, and emotionally legible. If I reflect on it hard enough—I think there’s something here that speaks to wholeness in fragmentation. That a thing can be broken and still be loved in its totality.
The center of every story (or chapter) is this: that the intimate gut-deep agonies of generational trauma make their presence felt in everyday life in ways so irrefutable and physically inescapable they can rip us open, spread from one body to another and rip our families apart, rip our bodies apart, and that it takes so much love and patience and compassion to push beyond the impasse of the past and begin the long work of restoration and healing, of recreating ourselves and each other through annihilation, and it is work, make no mistake, and it can last a lifetime, with no guarantee of fruition.
But like Dodie Bellamy had hoped in her essay “On Becoming Undone”, there might just be “tenderness at the end of our undoing.” In this book, Talty writes the kind of bereft and damaged and angry that still leaves room for love. In these stories, there’s the fact of pain—all the harrowing minutiae of being alive where loss is always nearby—but there’s also the fact of love walking up unexpectedly under it. The fact of love within loss.
Ultimately, Night of the Living Rez is a reminder of the ineradicable power of tenderness, of caring for one another in an often less-than-caring world, of loving each other through pain, tentatively, brokenly, and into wholeness.
“… and have you ever tried to walk in such a time of great rupture?”
May 20, 2023
On the Real Reservation
“Night of the Living Rez” offers twelve short stories portraying life in Maine’s Native Penobscot Nation. Author Morgan Talty shows us seasons in the life of David, a young man growing up on the reservation with his family. It is a tough existence where the fear of an evil curse walks alongside the ravages of drug addiction and the stresses of poverty. David’s mother is in an abusive relationship with an alcoholic part-time medicine man. Methadone treatments are crucial crutches to David and his friends. His sister, Paige, is tragically sucked into mental illness spurred on by, among other things, the death of her baby from methadone withdrawal seizures. In one unforgettable chapter David’s grandmother, suffering from Alzheimer's, is convinced he is her long dead twelve year old brother. Rather than being repulsed, he is amazed that he can bring relief to his grandmother’s nightmare.
There is a lot of loss in these stories, but there is a consistent feed of wit and humor. David and his family have always had struggles and have the mindset to survive. These passages give a very believable account of real people, not stereotypes, and enable us to relate to problems in a community very different from the ones most of us know. Morgan Talty agreed with writer Louis Owens that he was not interested in giving just “a comfortable, easy tour of colorful Indian Country.” This is an incredible book penned by an exciting new voice.
“I mean, I can hear what Donald Trump once said as he testified before a House subcommittee about one tribe’s casino: ‘ They don’t look like Indians to me’” (Author in quote from advance reader copy).
Thank you W. W. Norton and Company, Tin House Books, and NetGalley for providing the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #NightOfTheLivingRez #NetGalley
“Night of the Living Rez” offers twelve short stories portraying life in Maine’s Native Penobscot Nation. Author Morgan Talty shows us seasons in the life of David, a young man growing up on the reservation with his family. It is a tough existence where the fear of an evil curse walks alongside the ravages of drug addiction and the stresses of poverty. David’s mother is in an abusive relationship with an alcoholic part-time medicine man. Methadone treatments are crucial crutches to David and his friends. His sister, Paige, is tragically sucked into mental illness spurred on by, among other things, the death of her baby from methadone withdrawal seizures. In one unforgettable chapter David’s grandmother, suffering from Alzheimer's, is convinced he is her long dead twelve year old brother. Rather than being repulsed, he is amazed that he can bring relief to his grandmother’s nightmare.
There is a lot of loss in these stories, but there is a consistent feed of wit and humor. David and his family have always had struggles and have the mindset to survive. These passages give a very believable account of real people, not stereotypes, and enable us to relate to problems in a community very different from the ones most of us know. Morgan Talty agreed with writer Louis Owens that he was not interested in giving just “a comfortable, easy tour of colorful Indian Country.” This is an incredible book penned by an exciting new voice.
“I mean, I can hear what Donald Trump once said as he testified before a House subcommittee about one tribe’s casino: ‘ They don’t look like Indians to me’” (Author in quote from advance reader copy).
Thank you W. W. Norton and Company, Tin House Books, and NetGalley for providing the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #NightOfTheLivingRez #NetGalley
June 14, 2022
This was dark at times with lots of drugs and alcohol and struggles and sadness, panic, depression - overall trauma of troubled family life reflecting on life in the 21st century on an indigenous reservation in Maine. It’s referred to as a collection of stories, but it felt more like a novel and the stories felt like chapters about a young Penobscot boy David and his family and friends, just not told in chronological order. Moments of days at various times in his life from 12 to teenager to later in his 20’s and beyond.
BURN opens the book and sets the stage with David and his friend who only leave the rez to go to the methadone clinic or for pot . Sad but not without humor. THE BLESSING TOBACCO is about his grandmother who has dementia and thinks he’s her younger brother who died at 12 . This is one of the most touching stories in the collection, but not the saddest. That would be THE NAME MEANS THUNDER and I was gutted.
This was at times brutal to read , but it’s one of those books that when I finished I knew it was a story that needed to be told.
I received a copy of this book from Tin House through Edelweiss.
July 25, 2022
Twelve stories that go forward and backward in time that really add up to a novel about a native community, the Penobscot in the present day. This gets such rave reviews from almost everyone that I am embarrassed to say that I really didn’t like it much. Most of the stories are far from engaging and the characters are not all that interesting. The writing is good but good writing wasn’t enough for me and I spent almost the whole time waiting for something to develop. It didn’t.
Read
July 8, 2022I'm seeing many 5-star reviews so please do check those out.
I'm sorry but I'm not the right reader for this book. I had a hard time following and unable to finish it. I want to thank the author, Recorded Books, and Netgalley for providing me with the audiobook for review.
I'm sorry but I'm not the right reader for this book. I had a hard time following and unable to finish it. I want to thank the author, Recorded Books, and Netgalley for providing me with the audiobook for review.
May 1, 2022
Night of the Living Rez, a new short story collection, might please even those who seldom read in that genre. This is because, much like a novel, there is a narrative thread connecting all 12 stories, each told from the 1st-person point of view of a Native American boy living on a reservation somewhere in Maine.
In that sense, the work is similar to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories, which also center on coming-of-age themes. That said, the book is in many ways different from those collections and authors. This is not small-town America (Anderson) and it is not post-war soul-cleansing, either (Hemingway).
Of course, I would argue that any author handling characterization well replicates Anderson's "grotesques," as he called the people living lives of quiet desperation in Winesburg, just as any author who occasionally indulges in stylistic repetition and long sentences strung together with conjunctions echoes Hemingway.
What makes Night of the Living Rez distinct is a young protagonist named David (also called Dee), who is living in less-than-optimal circumstances on a reservation with his proud mother, her boyfriend who is heavy into Native traditions and medicine, and his older sister, who is struggling even more than he is. Yes, we have the usual issues of money, but also of drugs, alcohol, and violence. And cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarettes.
For me, it was a welcome change of pace from the usual urban/suburban middle class stuff you see in many contemporary works. For all of its differences, though, there were similarities, too. Kids are kids, after all, and at various ages in these stories, David gets into scraps that bring to the fore issues of right and wrong, maturity and immaturity, stupid and funny.
By stupid, I mean the messes boys/young men get themselves into, the way they try to show their toughness, the way bad-ass badinage often serves as a proxy for affection between friends. The dialogue’s accuracy rings true, too, right down to the swearing and the jokes and the put-downs. And, throughout it all, there’s some nice description. Always that sense of place, and some well-placed imagery that adds rather than distracts.
Sounds easy, maybe, but not a lot happens in many of these stories, and drawing narrative tension from them despite this is an accomplishment. Often it’s a case of “this is what happened when we were messing around last night” or “when we went to Fellis’ house last night” or “when we met down at the tribal museum” or “the time I went to look for money at grandma’s house.” Slices of life that, when put together, make it seem like something has happened after all. Something important to each of us who don’t feel our life is worth a story when, like David’s, it actually is.
Night of the Living Rez features both the quotidian and the strange, the foreign and the familiar. These dichotomies gain momentum as story follows story and the characters become more and more like family.
In a word: Recommended.
In that sense, the work is similar to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories, which also center on coming-of-age themes. That said, the book is in many ways different from those collections and authors. This is not small-town America (Anderson) and it is not post-war soul-cleansing, either (Hemingway).
Of course, I would argue that any author handling characterization well replicates Anderson's "grotesques," as he called the people living lives of quiet desperation in Winesburg, just as any author who occasionally indulges in stylistic repetition and long sentences strung together with conjunctions echoes Hemingway.
What makes Night of the Living Rez distinct is a young protagonist named David (also called Dee), who is living in less-than-optimal circumstances on a reservation with his proud mother, her boyfriend who is heavy into Native traditions and medicine, and his older sister, who is struggling even more than he is. Yes, we have the usual issues of money, but also of drugs, alcohol, and violence. And cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarettes.
For me, it was a welcome change of pace from the usual urban/suburban middle class stuff you see in many contemporary works. For all of its differences, though, there were similarities, too. Kids are kids, after all, and at various ages in these stories, David gets into scraps that bring to the fore issues of right and wrong, maturity and immaturity, stupid and funny.
By stupid, I mean the messes boys/young men get themselves into, the way they try to show their toughness, the way bad-ass badinage often serves as a proxy for affection between friends. The dialogue’s accuracy rings true, too, right down to the swearing and the jokes and the put-downs. And, throughout it all, there’s some nice description. Always that sense of place, and some well-placed imagery that adds rather than distracts.
Sounds easy, maybe, but not a lot happens in many of these stories, and drawing narrative tension from them despite this is an accomplishment. Often it’s a case of “this is what happened when we were messing around last night” or “when we went to Fellis’ house last night” or “when we met down at the tribal museum” or “the time I went to look for money at grandma’s house.” Slices of life that, when put together, make it seem like something has happened after all. Something important to each of us who don’t feel our life is worth a story when, like David’s, it actually is.
Night of the Living Rez features both the quotidian and the strange, the foreign and the familiar. These dichotomies gain momentum as story follows story and the characters become more and more like family.
In a word: Recommended.
February 16, 2023
A set of interconnected short stories about a Native American family living on the Penobscot Indian Nation Reservation in Maine. Powerful themes related to poverty, addiction, and intergenerational trauma. Especially in the first few stories, I liked the way we saw events through young David’s perspective, speaking to how youth can color our perception of events that will go on to affect us throughout the rest of our lives. Unfortunately as a whole the writing in this collection didn’t move me and the characters didn’t feel vivid enough to get me invested emotionally, though I appreciate the collection for what it brings to literary fiction today.
July 4, 2022
This is one of those books where I kind of just want to write "Wow!" as my review, and leave it at that.
Talty conjures up a series of interconnected stories about life on a Penobscot reservation. Most of the tales involve young men on a quest for money, drugs, and alcohol. Their bad decisions lead to some laugh out loud moments, but sadness is always waiting in the wings. It seemed like a bizarre combo of Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, and that Canadian TV show The Rez, but it damn sure worked. Some unforgettable stuff here, and surely one of the best books of the year.
Highly recommended.
Talty conjures up a series of interconnected stories about life on a Penobscot reservation. Most of the tales involve young men on a quest for money, drugs, and alcohol. Their bad decisions lead to some laugh out loud moments, but sadness is always waiting in the wings. It seemed like a bizarre combo of Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, and that Canadian TV show The Rez, but it damn sure worked. Some unforgettable stuff here, and surely one of the best books of the year.
Highly recommended.
October 14, 2025
While this is billed as a short story collection, which it is, it's also arguably a novel in that all 12 stories in this book follow the same character at various points in his life. You as the reader get to piece the larger narrative together through these smaller, independent scenes. I found Talty did this skillfully, painting a complex portrait of a young indigenous man as he struggles against the circumstances of his life, his own shortcomings, his desire for connection, and other coming-of-age elements, in beautifully descriptive and powerful stories. As in any collection, some stories stand out more than others, but I think the success here is in the book as a whole. By the end, I felt invested in David's life, having loved getting to know him, his family, his community, and his culture over the dozen stories we're given. I highly recommend this one, especially fans of Tommy Orange or Oscar Hokeah. And I look forward to reading more from Talty in the future!
January 13, 2025
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3 ½ stars (rounded up as this is a debut)
Over the last few years, I have developed a certain fondness for collections of interlinked short stories, especially when they focus on the same character or various members of the same family. I enjoy the way these collections often ‘disrupt’ the typical linear coming-of-age story, presenting us instead with self-contained stories that hone in on a specific period or moment of a character's life. I like the way they can achieve an almost snap-shot-like quality, one that really brings into focus the emotions and experiences of that specific moment. While here the style is pretty consistent, these collections also have the ability to implement different literary devices and of playing around with perspectives (switching between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd povs). If you like other collections with this type of format (such as Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, Patricia Engel’s Vida, and Zalika Reid-Benta's Frying Plantain), you should definitely not miss out on Night of the Living Rez. Additionally, if you also happen to appreciate narratives exploring fraught dynamics and dysfunctional families, novels such as Nuclear Family by Joseph Han & Kirstin Valdez Quade's The Five Wounds or memoirs like
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden or Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller, then Morgan Talty's debut should be up your street. Stylistically, thematically and tonally I was reminded of several other contemporary works by Indigenous authors, from David Heska Wanbli Weiden's crime thriller Winter Counts to Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach & Son of a Trickster, which combine magical realism with a coming-of-age narrative.
This collection comprises 12 short stories in which we follow our protagonist, who is a member of the Penobscot Nation and living with his family on a reservation in Maine. In these various stories, we are reunited with our narrator (i believe his name was Dee…?) as a child, a teen, and an adult. In many of these stories we see him, or the people close to him, struggle with dependency and attempt to co-exist (however dysfunctionally) with the rest of his family. Many of these stories are pure funny sad, as Talty perfectly brings together humor with a brutal yet precise exploration of very heavy themes. While I can predict that some readers will be frustrated by the ways the characters fail themselves and each other (falling into ‘bad habits’ or lifestyles, lying to one another about important sh*t, neglecting themselves and others) for me it really hit close to home. It isn’t to cut yourself loose from the people you love or the people who know you, and I appreciated how unjudgemental the author was in portraying his characters’ struggles with addiction etc. Recently-ish I mentioned in another review that I had to return to the city I grew up in because my father had fallen off the wagon big time and had to be hospitalized so, well, there were quite a few scenes that felt painfully familiar. But that’s enough about me. Talty encourages his readers not only to feel ‘sympathy’ towards his characters but to really emphasise them and their respective situations. The dialogues and the way the characters interacted with one another were strikingly realistic, and I appreciated how chaotic and messy some of these scenes were. By presenting us with a humorous yet ultimately haunting family portrait Talty is able to interrogate the way our legacies and inheritances shape us, and the difficulties in trying to reconcile yourself with a past that has left such indelible marks on your present. In this Talty is able to explore boyhood, generational trauma, and the continued injustices faced by Native communities. As I said, I really appreciated how realistic Talty's depiction of addiction and trauma were in that he shows that healing is not a linear or straightforward process. Despite the bleak themes and the depressing scenarios described in these stories, this was not a heavy read. The stuff in here is hard-hitting, sure, but there is this energetic humor that gives a sort of lightness to Dee's narration. Which again makes those painful and sad moments all the more brutal. Another thing worth pointing out is how in certain stories we have this horror-like atmosphere which not only lends authenticity to Dee's 'younger' stories (showing that he is more impressionable) but also reminds us of the horror in the everyday.
Overall, I thought this was a very self-assured debut. The writing is neither distracting nor dull, the dialogues and scenarios are realistically rendered, and the non-linear coming-of-age story was engrossing indeed.
I look forward to revisiting this collection (hopefully when i am in a less stressful period of my life and give it the attention it deserves) and I am curious to read Talty's future work.
3 ½ stars (rounded up as this is a debut)
“Mom had no money, and I knew better than to look. What money she ever came into she blew. Money—it was everywhere but nowhere.”
Over the last few years, I have developed a certain fondness for collections of interlinked short stories, especially when they focus on the same character or various members of the same family. I enjoy the way these collections often ‘disrupt’ the typical linear coming-of-age story, presenting us instead with self-contained stories that hone in on a specific period or moment of a character's life. I like the way they can achieve an almost snap-shot-like quality, one that really brings into focus the emotions and experiences of that specific moment. While here the style is pretty consistent, these collections also have the ability to implement different literary devices and of playing around with perspectives (switching between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd povs). If you like other collections with this type of format (such as Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, Patricia Engel’s Vida, and Zalika Reid-Benta's Frying Plantain), you should definitely not miss out on Night of the Living Rez. Additionally, if you also happen to appreciate narratives exploring fraught dynamics and dysfunctional families, novels such as Nuclear Family by Joseph Han & Kirstin Valdez Quade's The Five Wounds or memoirs like
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden or Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller, then Morgan Talty's debut should be up your street. Stylistically, thematically and tonally I was reminded of several other contemporary works by Indigenous authors, from David Heska Wanbli Weiden's crime thriller Winter Counts to Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach & Son of a Trickster, which combine magical realism with a coming-of-age narrative.
“You from the rez?” he said.
I didn’t look too Native, and so I said, “Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Your shirt says ‘Native Pride.’”
This collection comprises 12 short stories in which we follow our protagonist, who is a member of the Penobscot Nation and living with his family on a reservation in Maine. In these various stories, we are reunited with our narrator (i believe his name was Dee…?) as a child, a teen, and an adult. In many of these stories we see him, or the people close to him, struggle with dependency and attempt to co-exist (however dysfunctionally) with the rest of his family. Many of these stories are pure funny sad, as Talty perfectly brings together humor with a brutal yet precise exploration of very heavy themes. While I can predict that some readers will be frustrated by the ways the characters fail themselves and each other (falling into ‘bad habits’ or lifestyles, lying to one another about important sh*t, neglecting themselves and others) for me it really hit close to home. It isn’t to cut yourself loose from the people you love or the people who know you, and I appreciated how unjudgemental the author was in portraying his characters’ struggles with addiction etc. Recently-ish I mentioned in another review that I had to return to the city I grew up in because my father had fallen off the wagon big time and had to be hospitalized so, well, there were quite a few scenes that felt painfully familiar. But that’s enough about me. Talty encourages his readers not only to feel ‘sympathy’ towards his characters but to really emphasise them and their respective situations. The dialogues and the way the characters interacted with one another were strikingly realistic, and I appreciated how chaotic and messy some of these scenes were. By presenting us with a humorous yet ultimately haunting family portrait Talty is able to interrogate the way our legacies and inheritances shape us, and the difficulties in trying to reconcile yourself with a past that has left such indelible marks on your present. In this Talty is able to explore boyhood, generational trauma, and the continued injustices faced by Native communities. As I said, I really appreciated how realistic Talty's depiction of addiction and trauma were in that he shows that healing is not a linear or straightforward process. Despite the bleak themes and the depressing scenarios described in these stories, this was not a heavy read. The stuff in here is hard-hitting, sure, but there is this energetic humor that gives a sort of lightness to Dee's narration. Which again makes those painful and sad moments all the more brutal. Another thing worth pointing out is how in certain stories we have this horror-like atmosphere which not only lends authenticity to Dee's 'younger' stories (showing that he is more impressionable) but also reminds us of the horror in the everyday.
Overall, I thought this was a very self-assured debut. The writing is neither distracting nor dull, the dialogues and scenarios are realistically rendered, and the non-linear coming-of-age story was engrossing indeed.
I look forward to revisiting this collection (hopefully when i am in a less stressful period of my life and give it the attention it deserves) and I am curious to read Talty's future work.
September 15, 2022
At the bridge to the reservation, the river was still frozen, ice shining white-blue under a full moon. The sidewalk on the bridge hadn’t been shoveled since the last nor-easter crapped snow in November, and I walked in the boot prints everyone made who walked the walk to Overtown to get pot or catch the bus to wherever it was us skeejins had to go, which wasn’t anywhere because everything we needed — except pot — was on the rez. Well, except Best Buy or Bed Bath & Beyond, but those Natives who bought 4K Ultra DVDs or fresh white doilies had cars, wouldn’t be taking the bus like me or Fellis did each day to the methadone clinic. That's another thing the rez didn’t have: a methadone clinic. But we had sacred grounds where sweats and peyote ceremonies happened once a month, except since I had chosen to take methadone, I was ineligible to participate in Native spiritual practice, according to the doc on the rez.
Natives damning Natives.
Although technically a collection of twelve short stories, Night of the Living Rez reads like an episodic novel (so I am moved to review it like one, despite each story being a perfectly composed pearl; consider this the review of the necklace they form together). Each story centers on David (“Dee” to his friends, or to his Mom, “gwus” [boy]) — a member of the Penobscot Nation whose mother whisked him away from his white father’s home in the middle of the night to raise him on the reservation in Maine where she grew up — and the stories jump around in time from when he was a boy playing stick fights in the swamp with his buddies, up until he’s late-middle-aged and visiting his Mom in an elder care facility. Author Morgan Talty fully fleshes out David and his family in these stories: this is modern life on a reservation, with poverty, addiction, and trauma, but also community, friendships, and love. There’s a fascinating blend of modern and traditional worldviews in these tales: as the title implies, the spirits and monsters of the Penobscot belief system haunt the land throughout David’s life, but even more compellingly, the title story itself is one of modern circumstances and their horrifying true life consequences. I loved everything about this collection: David is a character you can’t help but root for — not in spite of his flaws, but because you witness how they came to be.
She’s dressed nice. Casual. A white T-shirt and black yoga pants and white sneakers. She doesn’t do yoga. All the white on her makes her look more Native, more Indian (she hates that word — Indian). But nothing makes her look young. She’s Native, and she has trauma. So do I — I’m the one who saw it — but she thinks she has more. She doesn’t say that, but she thinks it. Maybe she’s right. Maybe older Natives have more trauma than younger ones.
Central to these stories are David’s relationships: with his friends (and especially his best friend as a young man, Fellis) and with his Mom (who drinks boxed wine nightly with her live-in boyfriend). In the first story, Burn, David (who was unsuccessful in trying to scam some pot from a dealer) stumbles upon Fellis in the woods. Fellis had passed out in a snowbank, and when he woke up and realised that his hair had frozen into the ground, he was trapped until David found him, cut off his braid, and helped him home. Fellis gives David some money to go buy pot and snacks, but he also asks David to retrieve his hair from the woods so they can burn it and keep the spirits away. And this really sets the tone for the book: Until Fellis mentions burning the hair, these could be any two young guys; there’s a universality to the experience, but the ending makes this a particularly Indigenous tale.
The second story, In a Jar, tells the story of David and his Mom’s resettlement on the reservation. Nearly immediately, David finds a glass jar beneath the stoop of their new house — “filled with hair and corn and teeth. The teeth were white with a tint of yellow at the root. The hair was gray and thin and loose. Wild. And the corn was kind of like the teeth, white and yellow and looked hard.” — and recognising bad medicine when she sees it, his Mom calls her friend Frick, the medicine man who will eventually move in, and he performs a cleansing ceremony. Even so, in the stories that follow, David and his family never seem quite able to shrug off the buried curse (which I reckon one could read as the lingering effects of colonisation, intergenerational trauma, etc.).
With stories that jump around nonlinerally, traumatic events are hinted at and then revealed — we see David attempting to rob his grandmother for drug money before seeing him as a ten-year-old boy and learning what set him on that path — and the format was a very satisfying reading experience of foreshadowing and then filling in the blanks; with each story standing artfully on its own.
How’d we get here? That’s Fellis’ question, but it’s mine too. How’d we get here? I’m starting to think that each time I ask it, each time I consider an answer, I wind up further from where I should be, from where I was. Where I had been. I left a lot of things behind. Or maybe that’s not it — maybe it’s that a lot of things had left me behind. Friends. Family. Relationships. The future.
I did love everything about this: From Talty’s sentences to the perfect little world created in each individual story to the overall whole they formed. There’s pain and humour and life to be found here and I leave feeling like I have witnessed something true about the modern Penobscot experience; I could ask for nothing more.
Read
April 26, 2025This is one of the most difficult kinds of reviews to write- when there's a book that really isn't my thing, but also isn't bad. Especially something like Night of the Living Rez which has clearly resonated with a lot of readers. All that to say, please take my review with a grain of salt and also recognize that I'm not indigenous myself and so this maybe just isn't for me. Which is also valid.
I went in expecting this to be a collection of horror short stories. While a couple of them do lean towards horror, it is largely general fiction. As a primarily genre fiction reader, I might not have picked this up had I known what to expect.
Thematically, this is a collection of short stories exploring dysfunctional families, trauma, addiction, and poverty. For me, the characterization often wasn't very distinct and so the stories sort of bled into each other, feeling a bit like relentless repetition of trauma. There is humor woven in as well, though humor is very subjective and this didn't tend to be the sort of humor I find funny. I do wonder if listening to the audiobook contributed to this bleeding together of stories. It's voiced by a single narrator and all the character types sort of sound the same, which makes it difficult to tease out how much is the voice actor and how much is the actual writing.
I really wanted to love this collection, especially after seeing how moved some people I know were by it. But ultimately, I just think it wasn't for me. I needed more time with characters than I got. But based on reviews, your mileage will likely vary. I received an audio copy for review via Libro.FM. All opinions are my own.
I went in expecting this to be a collection of horror short stories. While a couple of them do lean towards horror, it is largely general fiction. As a primarily genre fiction reader, I might not have picked this up had I known what to expect.
Thematically, this is a collection of short stories exploring dysfunctional families, trauma, addiction, and poverty. For me, the characterization often wasn't very distinct and so the stories sort of bled into each other, feeling a bit like relentless repetition of trauma. There is humor woven in as well, though humor is very subjective and this didn't tend to be the sort of humor I find funny. I do wonder if listening to the audiobook contributed to this bleeding together of stories. It's voiced by a single narrator and all the character types sort of sound the same, which makes it difficult to tease out how much is the voice actor and how much is the actual writing.
I really wanted to love this collection, especially after seeing how moved some people I know were by it. But ultimately, I just think it wasn't for me. I needed more time with characters than I got. But based on reviews, your mileage will likely vary. I received an audio copy for review via Libro.FM. All opinions are my own.
November 22, 2022
3.5 stars
Anyone who adores Indiginous fiction in the vein of Stephen Graham Jones and Sherman Alexie will want to check out this book. I honestly rarely read short stories these days but the reserve setting piqued my interest. I really liked how the stories were actually interconnected with repeating characters. It really gave a good community feel and made the collection feel quite cohesive. In terms of horror, those elements are very light. In many ways this is more a literary collection, but still worth the read.
Anyone who adores Indiginous fiction in the vein of Stephen Graham Jones and Sherman Alexie will want to check out this book. I honestly rarely read short stories these days but the reserve setting piqued my interest. I really liked how the stories were actually interconnected with repeating characters. It really gave a good community feel and made the collection feel quite cohesive. In terms of horror, those elements are very light. In many ways this is more a literary collection, but still worth the read.
November 2, 2025
This work deserves more love!!
I know that the family who now lives in that house ripped down the sweat lodge and built a swing set in its place.
Reading this work is like experiencing an entire lifetime through fragmented moments in a life. As in life, even the small moments, the monotonous bus rides, the visit to a grandparent, have impact.
One way I know a story speaks to me is if I feel transported into the world seamlessly. I felt myself transported to these houses; I found myself thinking back on my own childhood and realizing I had been in similar houses, similar situations.
This is a collection of short stories about one ordinary mans coming of age on a Penobscot Rez, weaving back and forth through time from boyhood to adulthood. The central character is known as "David" in childhood, and "Dee" in adulthood, he experiences highs and lows framed by his Penobscot heritage, even in moments where he doesn't embrace his heritage.
Here’s my little soapbox caveat then back to the review: *It is important to note this is a coming of age story with a character that happens to be Penobscot; the characters in this book aren’t representative of an entire culture. The experiences and emotions in this work are universal, they don’t represent the entire indigenous experience. Don’t go into this book expecting to learn all about the Penobscot culture – you’re not going to, and a piece of literature shouldn’t have to carry the weight of an entire culture anyway.*
While this is a short story collection, it reads more like an episodic novel; the themes are the same, our main character is the same. These stories are the lessons of a life, the crushing truth of bad decisions, the reverberations of addiction, the facets of colonialisms still pervading our “modern” times. The stories are imbued with failings – parents fail their children, children fail their parents, society fails everyone. One of the largest themes in the collection is the cycle of addiction. Talty sums this up so well in a quote from THE NAME MEANS THUNDER:
"I didn't know, or couldn't conceptualize, how dependency transitioned from one body to the other, how all those actions had consequences."
At one point David asks “How’d we get here”, and that is the over arching question Talty relays to us through this work, how did we get here? How did society? Perhaps this question reflects back on the author. I can imagine this would be cathartic to write.
“How’d we get here? That’s Fellis’s question, but it’s mine too. How’d we get here? I’m starting to think that each time I ask it, each time I consider an answer, I wind up farther away from where I should be, from where I was. Where I had been. I left a lot of things behind. Or maybe that’s not it—maybe it’s that a lot of things had left me behind. Friends. Family. Relationships.”
He later extends this thought:
“I wonder if How'd we get here? is the wrong question. Maybe the right question is How do we get out of here? Maybe that's the only question that matters.”
This becomes the question that we ruminate on through the stories.
Talty shows us Reservation life in modern times without shying away from the darkest parts; He sugar coats nothing. Instead, Talty shows us a life plagued with problems –like methadone clinics –thrust on them by white faces, while also remaining true to Penobscot spirituality, folklore and mythology. I was so impressed with his ability to interlace mundanity with these elements of spirituality.
One of my favorite instances of this is a scene where teenage David and his friends are looking for a "monster" in the woods. The monster comes from Penobscot myth. It reminded me of times spent walking in the woods as a child, afraid Bigfoot would appear around every blind corner. When David and his friends finally encounter the monster, they discover it isn't a creature of legend – It is just David's sister, moving zombie-like through the woods, in the power of substances and alcohol. In this way, addiction becomes the true monster.
In terms of character, all of the characters are realistic and grey. No one is all good or all bad. The female characters are particularly well done –– they don't feel like cardboard cutouts. David's Mother and Sister are deeply nuanced, difficult characters that deal with loss in different ways.
Because the characters are grey – and as they age they change – David experiences conflicting emotions regarding the adults in his life. At one point, his impromptu father figure does a very, VERY, unforgivable thing. Later, David reflects on this, with a cadence that I found sobering:
"There is that terrible memory, surely, but so too are there sweet ones, the tiny memories with the tiny details that are milder in climax, no doubt, but equally powerful, like how Frick would pick me up from detention and take my backpack from me so I could climb into his high truck, and how I would always forget my backpack there, yet by some point in time the backpack would always be in my room. Or how my bike’s chain was always kept greased, or how if my toy men broke he would fix them, glue their legs or arms or heads back on. Or how, even when he was drunk, he would carry me to bed if I fell asleep on the couch."
This is not one of those short story collections that you can piece through and read a short story here or there, this is a collection meant to be devoured. I loved every story and admired the writing. Of all of the stories, my favorites were BURN, THE BLESSING TOBACCO, SAFE HARBOR, EARTH,SPEAK, NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ, and THE NAME MEANS THUNDER.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ and THE NAME MEANS THUNDER were so powerful, those two stories alone make this a five star read for me.
After I finished this collection, I watched an interview Morgan Talty gave at The Center for Fiction. He talks about how this novel is in a way “Auto-fiction” meaning that many of the stories have layers to them, vignettes and moments from his own life, approached through fiction. I really admired this admission, the vulnerability it shows. These short stories are vulnerable and valuable. Talty manages to fabricate memory without harming anyone, while still giving the stories justice.
He also talks about how white publishers and readers demand Indigenous culture to be put on display, to be performative and entertaining, rather than the actual reality of Indigenous life, the actual people living real lives. Talty did such a wonderful job writing about his Penobscot culture without using stereotypes, without providing entertainment. Instead he created a work that opens a doorway into a life and moments that many of us can relate to despite not sharing the culture. The poverty, the addiction, the happy moments playing as children.
Night of the Living Rez is one of the best books I have read this year.
I know that the family who now lives in that house ripped down the sweat lodge and built a swing set in its place.
Reading this work is like experiencing an entire lifetime through fragmented moments in a life. As in life, even the small moments, the monotonous bus rides, the visit to a grandparent, have impact.
One way I know a story speaks to me is if I feel transported into the world seamlessly. I felt myself transported to these houses; I found myself thinking back on my own childhood and realizing I had been in similar houses, similar situations.
This is a collection of short stories about one ordinary mans coming of age on a Penobscot Rez, weaving back and forth through time from boyhood to adulthood. The central character is known as "David" in childhood, and "Dee" in adulthood, he experiences highs and lows framed by his Penobscot heritage, even in moments where he doesn't embrace his heritage.
Here’s my little soapbox caveat then back to the review: *It is important to note this is a coming of age story with a character that happens to be Penobscot; the characters in this book aren’t representative of an entire culture. The experiences and emotions in this work are universal, they don’t represent the entire indigenous experience. Don’t go into this book expecting to learn all about the Penobscot culture – you’re not going to, and a piece of literature shouldn’t have to carry the weight of an entire culture anyway.*
While this is a short story collection, it reads more like an episodic novel; the themes are the same, our main character is the same. These stories are the lessons of a life, the crushing truth of bad decisions, the reverberations of addiction, the facets of colonialisms still pervading our “modern” times. The stories are imbued with failings – parents fail their children, children fail their parents, society fails everyone. One of the largest themes in the collection is the cycle of addiction. Talty sums this up so well in a quote from THE NAME MEANS THUNDER:
"I didn't know, or couldn't conceptualize, how dependency transitioned from one body to the other, how all those actions had consequences."
At one point David asks “How’d we get here”, and that is the over arching question Talty relays to us through this work, how did we get here? How did society? Perhaps this question reflects back on the author. I can imagine this would be cathartic to write.
“How’d we get here? That’s Fellis’s question, but it’s mine too. How’d we get here? I’m starting to think that each time I ask it, each time I consider an answer, I wind up farther away from where I should be, from where I was. Where I had been. I left a lot of things behind. Or maybe that’s not it—maybe it’s that a lot of things had left me behind. Friends. Family. Relationships.”
He later extends this thought:
“I wonder if How'd we get here? is the wrong question. Maybe the right question is How do we get out of here? Maybe that's the only question that matters.”
This becomes the question that we ruminate on through the stories.
Talty shows us Reservation life in modern times without shying away from the darkest parts; He sugar coats nothing. Instead, Talty shows us a life plagued with problems –like methadone clinics –thrust on them by white faces, while also remaining true to Penobscot spirituality, folklore and mythology. I was so impressed with his ability to interlace mundanity with these elements of spirituality.
One of my favorite instances of this is a scene where teenage David and his friends are looking for a "monster" in the woods. The monster comes from Penobscot myth. It reminded me of times spent walking in the woods as a child, afraid Bigfoot would appear around every blind corner. When David and his friends finally encounter the monster, they discover it isn't a creature of legend – It is just David's sister, moving zombie-like through the woods, in the power of substances and alcohol. In this way, addiction becomes the true monster.
In terms of character, all of the characters are realistic and grey. No one is all good or all bad. The female characters are particularly well done –– they don't feel like cardboard cutouts. David's Mother and Sister are deeply nuanced, difficult characters that deal with loss in different ways.
Because the characters are grey – and as they age they change – David experiences conflicting emotions regarding the adults in his life. At one point, his impromptu father figure does a very, VERY, unforgivable thing. Later, David reflects on this, with a cadence that I found sobering:
"There is that terrible memory, surely, but so too are there sweet ones, the tiny memories with the tiny details that are milder in climax, no doubt, but equally powerful, like how Frick would pick me up from detention and take my backpack from me so I could climb into his high truck, and how I would always forget my backpack there, yet by some point in time the backpack would always be in my room. Or how my bike’s chain was always kept greased, or how if my toy men broke he would fix them, glue their legs or arms or heads back on. Or how, even when he was drunk, he would carry me to bed if I fell asleep on the couch."
This is not one of those short story collections that you can piece through and read a short story here or there, this is a collection meant to be devoured. I loved every story and admired the writing. Of all of the stories, my favorites were BURN, THE BLESSING TOBACCO, SAFE HARBOR, EARTH,SPEAK, NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ, and THE NAME MEANS THUNDER.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ and THE NAME MEANS THUNDER were so powerful, those two stories alone make this a five star read for me.
After I finished this collection, I watched an interview Morgan Talty gave at The Center for Fiction. He talks about how this novel is in a way “Auto-fiction” meaning that many of the stories have layers to them, vignettes and moments from his own life, approached through fiction. I really admired this admission, the vulnerability it shows. These short stories are vulnerable and valuable. Talty manages to fabricate memory without harming anyone, while still giving the stories justice.
He also talks about how white publishers and readers demand Indigenous culture to be put on display, to be performative and entertaining, rather than the actual reality of Indigenous life, the actual people living real lives. Talty did such a wonderful job writing about his Penobscot culture without using stereotypes, without providing entertainment. Instead he created a work that opens a doorway into a life and moments that many of us can relate to despite not sharing the culture. The poverty, the addiction, the happy moments playing as children.
Night of the Living Rez is one of the best books I have read this year.
March 10, 2025
i don't know why i went into this thinking it would be horror/speculative-heavy stories (i do know why....it's because i love going into new books blind and the title evoked zombies for me), but i was surprised by the intensity of the dark, melancholy literary realism in this. on the level of prose/style, i was left wanting, but in terms of what this collection communicates, the sociopolitical realities it captures for native americans who are forced to grapple with colonial violence and its contemporary afterlife, i was incredibly moved. tried to keep my cool and not cry several times. in other words, i enjoyed the emotional dimensions in this more than i did the cut and dried execution.
my favorite in the collection was "earth, speak" (imo, a perfect story), which originally appeared in an old issue of shenandoah that you can read for free, if you want a taste of the stories in this. highly recommend reading it. overall, a 3.4/5.
my favorite in the collection was "earth, speak" (imo, a perfect story), which originally appeared in an old issue of shenandoah that you can read for free, if you want a taste of the stories in this. highly recommend reading it. overall, a 3.4/5.
Want to read
September 11, 2024i love a pun
June 27, 2022
Night of the Living Rez is a remarkable work of fiction, a set of a dozen short stories that can be read as a novel moving back and forth in time. Night of the Living Rez is set on Penobscot territory in Maine. The novel has a single narrator, David, but his age ranges widely across the stories, from a young boy to an elderly man reflecting on the past. In other stories he's in his late teens or late twenties. David's narrative voice is powerful and holds this collection together every bit as much as the interconnected plot elements within it. Night of the Living Rez is the kind of fiction that compels oxymorons: it's beautiful in its brutality; strangely gentle in its unflinching honesty; simultaneously bleak and loving. The stories embrace despair while also celebrating survival. Night of the Living Rez is a debut work that promises exceptional work to come. Read this book, then keep an eye out for Morgan Talty's next undertaking.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher for review purposes; the opinions are my own.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher for review purposes; the opinions are my own.
November 4, 2023
“I wonder if 'How'd we get here?' is the wrong question. Maybe the right question is 'How do we get out of here?' Maybe that's the only question that matters.”
🪶🚬🌌
These tales, which range from somber to endearing, show the hardships a young Native American faces in modern America.
Talty's debut collection of short stories offers an unflinching view of the brutal realities of life in the Penobscot Nation of Maine through twelve interconnected pieces, all of which are recounted by a young man, David.
Talty's characters are plagued by drug addiction, mental illness, poverty, and generational trauma. Their flaws and precarious circumstances work together to keep them mired in an endless cycle of misery, yet there is always hope for a better tomorrow.
Piercing, heartbreaking, and frequently darkly humorous, Night of the Living Rez is a haunting, compassionate look into the human condition.
🪶🚬🌌
These tales, which range from somber to endearing, show the hardships a young Native American faces in modern America.
Talty's debut collection of short stories offers an unflinching view of the brutal realities of life in the Penobscot Nation of Maine through twelve interconnected pieces, all of which are recounted by a young man, David.
Talty's characters are plagued by drug addiction, mental illness, poverty, and generational trauma. Their flaws and precarious circumstances work together to keep them mired in an endless cycle of misery, yet there is always hope for a better tomorrow.
Piercing, heartbreaking, and frequently darkly humorous, Night of the Living Rez is a haunting, compassionate look into the human condition.
February 6, 2023
I found this book to be very interesting. It takes us inside the life of one Penobscot man using a sequence of anecdotes. Reviewers and marketers call them "short stories", and many of the chapters were published separately in literary magazines, so I guess that qualified them as such. But for me, this read more like a novel that moved back and forth in time to give us a fuller picture of the life of Dee (David) from boyhood to teenager to young adulthood.
Unfortunately, David's family is very much impacted by substance abuse, and therefore many of the stories are tinged with sadness, but there's also humor in Talty's writing. Mostly, it felt very realistic to me, as if these could have been true stories about real people struggling out in the world. Talty's writing style is very engaging, and the characters were intriguing.
Looking forward to future work from this author.
Unfortunately, David's family is very much impacted by substance abuse, and therefore many of the stories are tinged with sadness, but there's also humor in Talty's writing. Mostly, it felt very realistic to me, as if these could have been true stories about real people struggling out in the world. Talty's writing style is very engaging, and the characters were intriguing.
Looking forward to future work from this author.
July 23, 2022
Night of the Living Rez is a short story collection of what it means to be Penobscot in the 21st century. The stories are all set in a Native Community in Maine. From the creepy, atmospheric, poignant, and humorous- this collection covers it all.
The book contains twelve short stories that all center around David. Told in a nonlinear order we follow David through various stages of his life. Visceral and raw these stories capture what it is to live as an indigenous person.
Native American stories are so important to me so I always jump at the opportunity to read a new release by an indigenous author. I listened to the audiobook version of Night of the Living Rez which is narrated by Darrell Dennis who did a phenomenal job. Immediately after finishing this audiobook, I ordered myself a physical copy. These stories touched my heart in so many ways. I found myself both laughing and deeply saddened by Morgan Talty’s lyrical words.
Morgan Talty has crafted a brilliant and beautiful debut novel. I see an amazing future for him as an author and I look forward to reading whatever he writes next! I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone! Readers who enjoyed The Removed by Brandon Hobson and/or There There by Tommy Orange will definitely love Night of the Living Rez!
Many thanks to Libro.FM for the gifted audiobook!
The book contains twelve short stories that all center around David. Told in a nonlinear order we follow David through various stages of his life. Visceral and raw these stories capture what it is to live as an indigenous person.
Native American stories are so important to me so I always jump at the opportunity to read a new release by an indigenous author. I listened to the audiobook version of Night of the Living Rez which is narrated by Darrell Dennis who did a phenomenal job. Immediately after finishing this audiobook, I ordered myself a physical copy. These stories touched my heart in so many ways. I found myself both laughing and deeply saddened by Morgan Talty’s lyrical words.
Morgan Talty has crafted a brilliant and beautiful debut novel. I see an amazing future for him as an author and I look forward to reading whatever he writes next! I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone! Readers who enjoyed The Removed by Brandon Hobson and/or There There by Tommy Orange will definitely love Night of the Living Rez!
Many thanks to Libro.FM for the gifted audiobook!
November 23, 2022
These bitter sweet short stories, so beautifully written, come together in the most heartbreaking, the most genuine way, each one opening up a new level, a new understanding to the bigger story they tell. The characters were so insanely well fleshed out that I so much rooted for them and smiled and cried with them. I think this book will stay with me for some time and I would recommend it unconditionally.
March 8, 2023
Bookclub read for Feb (which I just managed to get completed in time) is a collection of short stories set on the Penobscot Indian Nation reservation in Maine.
This book provided valuable insight into a community I knew little about. Between this and my previous historical fiction read The Son - I have covered Native American history from the 1800s until modern times, and it does not make for cheerful reading!
I am unsure about the short story designation here, the experience was akin to reading a slight novel with a few recurring characters. Things were further complicated by time shifts and alternating chapters with similar characters. I had a strong preference for the story of David, Frick and Paige and resented when we cycled away from them every second chapter.
I suppose my long-standing issue with short stories prevented me from fully engaging with this. Basically, I wanted this to be a novel. Nevertheless, this was an interesting addition to my Native American literature reading, so far limited to Louise Erdrich and Tommy Orange but it didn’t reach the heights of those works.
However, should Morgan Talty decide to write a novel, I will totally be there for it.
This book provided valuable insight into a community I knew little about. Between this and my previous historical fiction read The Son - I have covered Native American history from the 1800s until modern times, and it does not make for cheerful reading!
I am unsure about the short story designation here, the experience was akin to reading a slight novel with a few recurring characters. Things were further complicated by time shifts and alternating chapters with similar characters. I had a strong preference for the story of David, Frick and Paige and resented when we cycled away from them every second chapter.
I suppose my long-standing issue with short stories prevented me from fully engaging with this. Basically, I wanted this to be a novel. Nevertheless, this was an interesting addition to my Native American literature reading, so far limited to Louise Erdrich and Tommy Orange but it didn’t reach the heights of those works.
However, should Morgan Talty decide to write a novel, I will totally be there for it.
July 6, 2022
re-upping this bc it came out today! this book really stayed with me.
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I found this connected series of short stories nothing short of exceptional. Even though this is the author’s first published collection, it shows great expertise in its delicacy, concision and emotional impact. The circumstances of my childhood could not have been more different yet I recognized myself in David. This for me is the mark of an author who can describe a unique situation so well that it becomes universal. This is a book that builds slowly inside you. By the time you get to “Safe Harbor” Talty has worked you so deeply you are ready to be undone. Pretty fabulous work of Native literature, American literature and just literature.
--------------------
I found this connected series of short stories nothing short of exceptional. Even though this is the author’s first published collection, it shows great expertise in its delicacy, concision and emotional impact. The circumstances of my childhood could not have been more different yet I recognized myself in David. This for me is the mark of an author who can describe a unique situation so well that it becomes universal. This is a book that builds slowly inside you. By the time you get to “Safe Harbor” Talty has worked you so deeply you are ready to be undone. Pretty fabulous work of Native literature, American literature and just literature.
September 23, 2025
This popped up on my "You Should Read" top 10 lists book stuff they put out from Business Insider it was all supposed to be spooky stuff, you know and I saw this and I was like Damn, this is gonna be scary as all hell so I read it and I was like this isn't fucking scary this is why I give it one star and another thing I don't get is why it says "stories" on this because it reads like a story collection you know so it should have said "novel" I just don't get it you got to make up your mind when you're doing this stuff marketing messed up real bad you know Business Insider I'm just mad at them I don't think they get nothing right they're inside what they're not inside anything except I don't even know except what they ain't in this jesum got me mad as all heck
February 4, 2023
Listen Linda.
I’m a little ticked at the way this book was marketed.
Because it is a beautiful, stunning book, that I am happy to have read, but did not necessarily enjoy reading because, mentally I was not in the right headspace for this.
Someone says “Night of the Living Rez” is a short story, horror collection and my head immediately goes to Stephen Graham Jones. Maybe that’s not fair but that’s what I was expecting. Something kinda campy and fun.
That’s not even remotely what this is.
I almost even struggle to call it a collection of short stories though that’s how they were originally published. It feels like a slice of life novel that bounces back and forth in time. Because I’m pretty sure Dee is the older David but perhaps I’m wrong. (If How High We Go In The Dark can call itself a novel then certainly this is more a novel than that, but I digress.)
And yes- there are elements of horror, but it’s much more contemporary literature to me than horror.
And it is so beautifully written. This is absolutely the best written book I’ve read this year. I highlighted plenty and probably could have found other quotes if I’d been looking. It made me laugh. It brought tears to my eyes. Took me through a whole range of emotions.
But it is heavy.
So heavy it is painful. As it should be.
But like I said, mentally I was just not prepared, and this hits hard on the two content warnings I do look out for: addiction and child death.
I don’t mean to scare anyone off, because I think it’s a book that deserves to be read. I just wish it to find the right audience at the right time.
I’m a little ticked at the way this book was marketed.
Because it is a beautiful, stunning book, that I am happy to have read, but did not necessarily enjoy reading because, mentally I was not in the right headspace for this.
Someone says “Night of the Living Rez” is a short story, horror collection and my head immediately goes to Stephen Graham Jones. Maybe that’s not fair but that’s what I was expecting. Something kinda campy and fun.
That’s not even remotely what this is.
I almost even struggle to call it a collection of short stories though that’s how they were originally published. It feels like a slice of life novel that bounces back and forth in time. Because I’m pretty sure Dee is the older David but perhaps I’m wrong. (If How High We Go In The Dark can call itself a novel then certainly this is more a novel than that, but I digress.)
And yes- there are elements of horror, but it’s much more contemporary literature to me than horror.
And it is so beautifully written. This is absolutely the best written book I’ve read this year. I highlighted plenty and probably could have found other quotes if I’d been looking. It made me laugh. It brought tears to my eyes. Took me through a whole range of emotions.
But it is heavy.
So heavy it is painful. As it should be.
But like I said, mentally I was just not prepared, and this hits hard on the two content warnings I do look out for: addiction and child death.
I don’t mean to scare anyone off, because I think it’s a book that deserves to be read. I just wish it to find the right audience at the right time.
July 4, 2022
night of living rez is a short story collection that shows the struggles and trauma of david and his family and friends in the 21st century through david's pov. the short stories are detailed, random stories david experienced from his teens to adulthood, not told in chronological order.
considering i don't normally pick this genre; i enjoyed this one. however, i just found it a little difficult to keep up between the stories- either cause they weren't written in chronological order or i was too ill to keep up. nevertheless, it's a fun, intriguing, dark novel.
thank you netgalley and rb media for the audiobook
considering i don't normally pick this genre; i enjoyed this one. however, i just found it a little difficult to keep up between the stories- either cause they weren't written in chronological order or i was too ill to keep up. nevertheless, it's a fun, intriguing, dark novel.
thank you netgalley and rb media for the audiobook
February 11, 2023
This is a very interesting collection of interlinked short stories/ a non-linear novel. Talty’s stories about the life of a family on the Penobscot Reservation is confronting in many ways. The impact of substance abuse and generational deprivation sits at the centre of each of these stories. Although there are moments in this collection that are unrelentingly bleak, there are also moments of humour in the narrative voice. In this way, Talty takes a look at the complexities of lives in these places. As will all collections, this was a little uneven, but built towards a devastating conclusion.
June 11, 2025
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, American Academy of Arts & Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, The New England Book Award, and the National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
A Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Chautauqua Prize 2023, and Barnes & Noble Discover Book Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, NPR, Esquire, Oprah Daily, and more
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s projects the past onto her grandson; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.
A collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, Night of the Living Rez is an unforgettable portrayal of an Indigenous community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: When a new voice speaks in a jaded crowd, it feels like being next to a rocket launch does. The sound is so loud, so intense, its pressure unbalances your legs and knocks you back on your heels.
Morgan Talty, laddies and gentlewomen. From the first story, where we're confronted with cultural touchstones not in upper-class white peoples' frames of reference, we're in assured hands...the limning of the setting, the colors of the relationship dynamics, the milieu, all in three paragraphs...and challenged to accept the entire package as it is.
I shall, comme d'habitude, use the Bryce Method to assess the stories one-by-one.
Burn is the story I quoted above. A short, sharp shock, a shot across the bow of your luxury literary yacht, a foghorn on a sunny cruise. Disorienting by design, this is your chance to return to familiar shores.
I didn't. 5 impressed stars
In a Jar follows David studying his fractured family as it re-forms in unfamiliar ways. His much older sister, first an absence, then a hard sharp corner; his Mumma, inscrutable to kid-eyed David, touchy and strange; Frick, a man new to David and in a place his abandoned father once didn't want.
All the surprise in this concatenated chain of beings comes from knockings in walls, from jars of ill will, from refrigerated poisons ingested through other mouths. 5 more stars
Get Me Some Medicine follows low-life Fellis...the one talking to Dee in the quote all the way above...as he and Dee scrape the bottom of the barrel, drain the butt-end-filled last can of beer, and do themselves no good whatever doing it.
You can't save people. Nor should you, after a while, try. I don't think these boys, these pushing-thirty boys, can be saved. And neither do they. Dee is, at the very least, possessed of glimmers of self-awareness; Fellis, none. 4*
Food for the Common Cold shakes the ugly bits you never tell your partner loose. David, eleven now, can't quite grasp why Frick is so angry; Mumma can't tell him, he's too young; his Dad's far away and shut out like always; so it festers and seethes, finally David lances the boil out of fear for his mother, and out it all oozes for everyone to see, smell, and finally clean up.
Leaving David sick with, what, a cold? A cloggy, soggy cold? Maybe, maybe more. 4.5*
In a Field of Stray Caterpillars gets useless shitty Fellis even deeper into the badness, as he's now got Dee driving him home from his ECT treatments then spending the night there...and Dee's got a white woman on the line, knowing there's never going to be a good ending to that story, still running from what he knows he needs to do by using Fellis.
And this night, the one we're joining the boys to live through, is in the midst of a major mating season overload. The reek of the rotting animals mirrors Fellis and Dee's vacuity by filling the world with a passing stink that won't even result in better-nourished weeds. Fellis is so far gone the nurses are taking about putting a port in him so they don't have to hunt for a vein when they need to fry him with ECT.
How perfect. 5*
The Blessing Tobacco is a family...David's family, now with his much-older sister home...coming to terms with the end of an elder's life, when her body will not die at the same rate as her mind. It's just terrible and painful and all folded in with each others' craziness, fear, and anger.
Outliving your mind is a terrible curse. Outliving your family? Oh. It's scalding water on an icy windshield. 5*
Safe Harbor isn't...when is it ever? How do you ever know when you're going to have that moment of final fear? The one that changes your orientation in the world, the one where you are not the same person between seconds? David becoming Dee doesn't happen in front of us. But happen it does and we don't know him one speck better than before. 5*
Smokes Last brings me face-to-face with one of my most beloathèd addictions: cigarettes. I despise smokers. They reek, they're so unbelievably selfish, taking up all the air in a room and then flinging the leftover chunk of spit-soaked stinking garbage wherever and however it suits them, slowly drowning in the phlegm they hack onto streets and sidewalks for other people to deal with.
And here's fourteen-year-old David shovin' one into his mouth, "just suck a cock! it tastes better and at least somebody's happy!" I want to (maybe did) shout at him. He and his buds out bein' hooligans, beatin' each other up, chuckin' rocks...kids are so much the same everywhere.
Growing up. Not getting any guidance. No wonder what happens happened. 4*
Half-Life is the sharp part of the descent. It's harrowing and appalling and brutally bitterly honest. 4.5*
Earth, Speak is rock bottom. Harrowing. 5*
Night of the Living Rez would've been more palatable if it'd been zombies, or pugwagees; instead it was all over the fucking TV because of course it was and, if it'd been a white woman, it would've been self defense. 5 appalled stars
The Name Means Thunder burns in my head. The sheer horror of what happens when you can't undo a deed. The never-ending awfulness of life's worst moments defining you, charting your course. Too many undone deeds that lead to a done one. The worst of it is: you can't not see it in every moment of every awful undone deed. 5*
Morgan Talty's debut. Can you even imagine having this in you and no way for it to come out that won't change...everything.
The Publisher Says: Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, American Academy of Arts & Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, The New England Book Award, and the National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
A Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Chautauqua Prize 2023, and Barnes & Noble Discover Book Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, NPR, Esquire, Oprah Daily, and more
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s projects the past onto her grandson; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.
A collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, Night of the Living Rez is an unforgettable portrayal of an Indigenous community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: When a new voice speaks in a jaded crowd, it feels like being next to a rocket launch does. The sound is so loud, so intense, its pressure unbalances your legs and knocks you back on your heels.
Morgan Talty, laddies and gentlewomen. From the first story, where we're confronted with cultural touchstones not in upper-class white peoples' frames of reference, we're in assured hands...the limning of the setting, the colors of the relationship dynamics, the milieu, all in three paragraphs...and challenged to accept the entire package as it is.
"Fucking bullshit, fucking goddamn winter, what the fuck."
I laughed.
"It ain't funny, Dee."
"Look," I said. "Do you want me to cut my braid too?"
I shall, comme d'habitude, use the Bryce Method to assess the stories one-by-one.
Burn is the story I quoted above. A short, sharp shock, a shot across the bow of your luxury literary yacht, a foghorn on a sunny cruise. Disorienting by design, this is your chance to return to familiar shores.
I didn't. 5 impressed stars
In a Jar follows David studying his fractured family as it re-forms in unfamiliar ways. His much older sister, first an absence, then a hard sharp corner; his Mumma, inscrutable to kid-eyed David, touchy and strange; Frick, a man new to David and in a place his abandoned father once didn't want.
All the surprise in this concatenated chain of beings comes from knockings in walls, from jars of ill will, from refrigerated poisons ingested through other mouths. 5 more stars
Get Me Some Medicine follows low-life Fellis...the one talking to Dee in the quote all the way above...as he and Dee scrape the bottom of the barrel, drain the butt-end-filled last can of beer, and do themselves no good whatever doing it.
You can't save people. Nor should you, after a while, try. I don't think these boys, these pushing-thirty boys, can be saved. And neither do they. Dee is, at the very least, possessed of glimmers of self-awareness; Fellis, none. 4*
Food for the Common Cold shakes the ugly bits you never tell your partner loose. David, eleven now, can't quite grasp why Frick is so angry; Mumma can't tell him, he's too young; his Dad's far away and shut out like always; so it festers and seethes, finally David lances the boil out of fear for his mother, and out it all oozes for everyone to see, smell, and finally clean up.
Leaving David sick with, what, a cold? A cloggy, soggy cold? Maybe, maybe more. 4.5*
In a Field of Stray Caterpillars gets useless shitty Fellis even deeper into the badness, as he's now got Dee driving him home from his ECT treatments then spending the night there...and Dee's got a white woman on the line, knowing there's never going to be a good ending to that story, still running from what he knows he needs to do by using Fellis.
And this night, the one we're joining the boys to live through, is in the midst of a major mating season overload. The reek of the rotting animals mirrors Fellis and Dee's vacuity by filling the world with a passing stink that won't even result in better-nourished weeds. Fellis is so far gone the nurses are taking about putting a port in him so they don't have to hunt for a vein when they need to fry him with ECT.
How perfect. 5*
The Blessing Tobacco is a family...David's family, now with his much-older sister home...coming to terms with the end of an elder's life, when her body will not die at the same rate as her mind. It's just terrible and painful and all folded in with each others' craziness, fear, and anger.
Outliving your mind is a terrible curse. Outliving your family? Oh. It's scalding water on an icy windshield. 5*
Safe Harbor isn't...when is it ever? How do you ever know when you're going to have that moment of final fear? The one that changes your orientation in the world, the one where you are not the same person between seconds? David becoming Dee doesn't happen in front of us. But happen it does and we don't know him one speck better than before. 5*
Smokes Last brings me face-to-face with one of my most beloathèd addictions: cigarettes. I despise smokers. They reek, they're so unbelievably selfish, taking up all the air in a room and then flinging the leftover chunk of spit-soaked stinking garbage wherever and however it suits them, slowly drowning in the phlegm they hack onto streets and sidewalks for other people to deal with.
And here's fourteen-year-old David shovin' one into his mouth, "just suck a cock! it tastes better and at least somebody's happy!" I want to (maybe did) shout at him. He and his buds out bein' hooligans, beatin' each other up, chuckin' rocks...kids are so much the same everywhere.
Growing up. Not getting any guidance. No wonder what happens happened. 4*
Half-Life is the sharp part of the descent. It's harrowing and appalling and brutally bitterly honest. 4.5*
Earth, Speak is rock bottom. Harrowing. 5*
Night of the Living Rez would've been more palatable if it'd been zombies, or pugwagees; instead it was all over the fucking TV because of course it was and, if it'd been a white woman, it would've been self defense. 5 appalled stars
The Name Means Thunder burns in my head. The sheer horror of what happens when you can't undo a deed. The never-ending awfulness of life's worst moments defining you, charting your course. Too many undone deeds that lead to a done one. The worst of it is: you can't not see it in every moment of every awful undone deed. 5*
Morgan Talty's debut. Can you even imagine having this in you and no way for it to come out that won't change...everything.
February 11, 2023
3.5 stars
September 8, 2022
Night of the Living Rez is a collection of twelve contemporary short stories all centering around a Native family in Maine. Young David finds a jar holding a curse that will bring misfortune to his family as they struggle through addiction, abuse, and poverty. There are some heavy stories here: a grandmother with Alzheimer’s is convinced her grandson is her long-dead brother, a mother struggles with her addictions and the loss of her baby, and two friends attempt to rob a museum after watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow.
Somehow, in the middle of all this darkness, there is a powerful light of surprising humor in brief flashes and the beauty of honesty, no matter how grim.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
Somehow, in the middle of all this darkness, there is a powerful light of surprising humor in brief flashes and the beauty of honesty, no matter how grim.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
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