Magnificent.— Lily King, The New York Times
Remarkable. . . . An electric, captivating voice. . . . Talty has assured himself a spot in the canon of great Native American literature.
Captivating.
A perfect mix of funny, sad, timely, and intense, this one has something for everyone.
A blazing new talent.
Memorable.
Astounding. . . . Talty is an important new writer to watch.
Talty’s book haunted and thrilled me in its raw explorations of inheritance, grief and survival, imbued with humor and warmth.
Etched with humor, violence, tenderness, and insight, these braided stories burn bright.
Unearths grace amid strife. . . . Talty, with his ear for natural, almost musical dialogue, compels you to keep listening.
Emotionally pitch-perfect, immersive, and beautifully nuanced, Talty has gifted readers with a stunning debut that shows the interconnectedness of family, community, and ultimately who we are and what we can become. . . . devastating, satisfying, and heart-stopping.
Gorgeous.
Powerful.
Searing, devastating and often darkly funny.
As tender as anything you’ll read this year.
These stories took me in the same way Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son did when I first read it. The comparison here is meant in every way to praise Talty as a writer, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one who says so, partially because of his emotional precision, his stark, unflinching, droll, intoxicating style, and also because of a certain drug/addiction element at play here. But as I got deeper into the work, into the book, and came to understand these lives and this community, the further away it felt from my initial comparison with Johnson, and the more familiar it felt—our Native communities being bound by countless common threads, strengths and afflictions both—and only then did I understand the distinct brilliance of Talty’s voice as its own, and ours. I knew and felt for these people. Wanted to and knew I couldn’t help them, even as they did me. There is so much brutal, raw, and beautiful power in these stories. I kept wanting to read and know more about these peoples’ lives, how they ended up where they ended up, how they would get out, how they wouldn’t. It is difficult to be so honest, and funny, and sad, at once, in any kind of work. Reading this book, I literally laughed and cried.— Tommy Orange, author of There There
Morgan Talty's Night of the Living Rez is a beautifully crafted, raw and intimate book about youth, friendship, and family on the reservation. These stories are profoundly moving and essential, rendered with precision and intimacy. Talty is a powerful new voice in Native American fiction.— Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed
Flawless. . . . a masterwork by a major talent.
Uses humor and heartache to tell the interconnected stories of a menagerie of Indigenous characters.
An inspired debut.
A triumph of fiction that values each and every one of its flawed characters deeply and that spins its stories in such a way that invites an immediate reread.
Accomplished. . . . It was the only book of 2022 that I read twice.
Remarkable.
Woven together with the care and intimacy of a family heirloom.
Compassionate and insightful.
Incendiary.
Stunning.
Tender, searing insight tempered with humor and compassion. This is a book to sink into.
A masterful debut. . . . filled with grit and has heaps of heart to spare.— Isaac Fitzgerald
It’s so damn good. After reading the last sentence of the final short story, I just sat there feeling stunned.— Joseph Han, author of Nuclear Family
Shouldn’t be missed.
Unforgettable. . . . manages to assert that hope and forgiveness are possible.
The best collection I have read all year.
Beautiful.
Exceptional. . . . [Talty] is a tremendously gifted writer, thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Reflects the complexity, irony and humor of what it means to love and be loved, and how love itself is often an imperfect thing, even in its purest forms.
Demands to be read, then read again.
If you only read one short story collection this year, make it Night of the Living Rez.
Remarkable. . . . Clear-eyed and compassionate.
Unforgettable. . . . rich in both plot and execution, this is a book that reflects how humanity is shaped by both trauma and survival.
Devastating and witty.
Talty is sure to delight us with humor and mend our hearts with humanity.
Mixes tales of addiction and sadness with joy and humor.
A memorable portrait of survival, love and perseverance.
Night of the Living Rez is a fiercely intelligent and beautifully written set of stories—a spectacularly visceral and moving account of the experience of a member of the Penobscot Nation in today’s America—as well as a wrenching meditation on family and familial dysfunction. Morgan Talty is a master of the way dependency and pain transition from one body to another; the way both separating and refusing to separate become modes of saving ourselves; and the way, for all of our failures, we never stop doing what we can to provide each other hope.— Jim Shepard, author of Phase Six
Night of the Living Rez is true storytelling. It's a book so funny, so real, so spirited and vivid it brought me back to my own rez life and the people who made me.— Terese Marie Mailhot, author of Heart Berries
While soaked in pain and broken promises, Night of The Living Rez delivers with a grace and dignity on par with the writings of Craig Lesley, Dawn Dumont, James Welch and Joseph Dandurand. Morgan Talty delivers on so many levels and proves that this is why Indigenous Literature continues to be its own unique and sacred blessing. I loved this book. Loved it. And I can't wait to see what Morgan Talty does next. I am a fan for life. Mahsi cho, Morgan!— Richard Van Camp, author of The Lesser Blessed
Night of the Living Rez delivers stories that combine the otherworldly with the everyday in ways that startle and sing. Morgan Talty portrays Maine and his Penobscot characters in language and images both beautiful and inventive. With equal parts humor and haunting, this book will linger.— Toni Jensen, author of Carry
Night of the Living Rez is an indelible portrait of a family in crisis, and an incisive exploration of the myriad ways in which the past persists in haunting the present. I loved these sharply atmospheric, daring, and intensely moving stories, each one dense with peril and tenderness. Morgan Talty is a thrilling new talent.— Laura van den Berg, author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
There is so much beauty in these stories. . . . they build on themselves the way a life builds: messily, unpredictably, with love and heartache and never quite in the way you expect.
Joining the ranks of Tommy Orange, Brandon Hobson and Terese Marie Mailhot, Talty's strikingly successful debut is poised to expand the growing circle of lauded Indigenous writers. Superb.
Ingenious. . . . Unforgettable.
Talty is adept at unearthing his characters’ emotions. . . . these stories reveal the hardships facing a young Native American in contemporary America.
Brilliant.
★ 2022-04-22
In 12 linked stories, all narrated by a character named David, Talty’s debut collection provides an unsparing perspective on the harsh reality of life in the Panawahpskek (Penobscot) Nation of Maine.
Drug addiction, mental illness, and economic insecurity haunt Talty’s characters, whose personal flaws and straitened circumstances combine to keep them trapped in a cycle of poverty and despair. As a child, in the story “In a Jar,” David lives with his mother and her partner, Frick, a part-time medicine man and equally part-time father figure, when his pregnant older sister, Paige, arrives to ratchet up the tension in the family’s already overburdened life. By the time David reaches young adulthood, as portrayed in stories like “Burn” and “Get Me Some Medicine,” he’s hanging out with Fellis, his friend and fellow visitor to the local methadone clinic. The pair spend their evenings drinking and contemplating how they’ll get their hands on “pins” (Klonopin), culminating in the story “Half-Life,” in which David asks himself, “How’d we get here?” but then wonders whether “the only question that matters” is “How do we get out of here?” For all his stories’ terse realism, Talty, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation, is adept at unearthing his characters’ emotions, as he does in the elegiac “The Blessing Tobacco,” in which David’s grandmother, well down the road of cognitive decline, believes he’s her late brother Robbie, who died as a young boy, and fiendishly punishes him to exorcise her guilt for her role in Robbie’s long-ago death. David’s observation in the story “Earth, Speak” that “this reservation was for the dead” serves as a mournful benediction over these bleak, but empathetic, tales.
Ranging from grim to tender, these stories reveal the hardships facing a young Native American in contemporary America.
