Sequoyah, a member of Oklahoma’s Cherokee Nation and the unreliable narrator of Where the Dead Sit Talking, looks back to 1989 when he was 15 and witnessed the death of a 17-year-old girl. Hobson’s text can be annoyingly ambiguous at times, but a close, attentive reading suggests that Sequoyah had a role in her demise, which is depicted as a strange one: both a murder and a suicide—of a single person. The narrator provides a slippery account of the events leading up to the young woman’s death.

1989 is the year that Sequoyah is placed in foster care—after his alcoholic mother is imprisoned on drug-related charges. (Prior to this, the two had fled domestic abuse in Cherokee Country for a different type of instability in Tulsa, but the bad spirits followed them like smoke. Sequoyah’s addicted mother couldn’t keep a job, and her neglected son wandered the streets in the company of other lost boys and shady characters.) After stints in shelters and juvenile detention centres, the boy ultimately finds himself on the outskirts of Little Crow, near Black River in rural Oklahoma. He lives with Harold and Agnes Troutt and two other eccentric, troubled, and traumatized foster kids: Rosemary Blackwell (there’s a lot of black in this book) and 13-year-old George. Rosemary is a beautiful, artistic, and death-obsessed Kiowa girl, who may have been involved in prostitution and drugs, while George is a boy genius. He’s working on a novel about a society in decline, reads sophisticated religious and philosophical texts, and engages in charitable works.

Right from the start, Sequoyah is fascinated by the elusive Rosemary. It is not sexual attraction, but a mysterious, even mystical, twin-ship. Sequoyah does not desire Rosemary so much as want to be her. If he dies, he would like her to have his body. It is not clear if it is this wish to merge with Rosemary, his intense rage at her growing disinterest in him, or some other psychotic delusion that motivates him to place his hand on her gun-gripping one. Hobson seems to intimate that demonic possession could also explain Sequoyah’s disturbed behaviour. Although the Cherokee are not one of the Algonquian-speaking First Nations of North America, Hobson appears to be well acquainted with their spiritual traditions. Rosemary mentions the windigo in connection with Sequoyah’s father, and it seems as right a reading as any that the son has been transformed into one. He is weak—“easily influenced”, isolated, and socially disconnected enough to be vulnerable to this malevolent, mythical supernatural being. As the pages turn, the reader watches Sequoyah’s roommate, George (who is initially eager for friendship with the “feral kid in black jeans”) grow increasingly fearful in this older boy’s presence.

Sequoyah has noticeable facial scars. When asked about them, he says that they are the result of his drunken mother “accidentally” spilling hot grease on him. His insistence on this is enough to raise suspicion about how accidental the incident really was. Uncertain about his gender, Sequoyah regularly uses eyeliner and takes advantage of opportunities to wear Rosemary’s clothes. However, he seems to feel no sexual attraction to anyone, male or female, and he expertly evades the predatory men who accost him. Sequoyah does not lack self-awareness. He is conscious of an emotional flatness, a vacancy, a deadness inside. He says he is “damaged in spirit”. Hobson’s depiction of him put me in mind of psychologist John Bowlby’s classic studies of maladjusted, delinquent, and affectionless children with severe attachment disorders. Sequoyah’s mind frequently streams violent fantasies, and his involvement in Rosemary’s death appears to mark the beginning of his homicidal course. Two other young people in Rosemary’s orbit subsequently suffer violent deaths, and the reader has no reason to doubt that Sequoyah is responsible.

All of Hobson’s characters are disconnected and disturbed. All express a preference for being alone. The young are invariably fixated on death, but even Harold and Agnes, ostensibly loving and tolerant foster parents, have shadow sides. Harold is a bookie, whose father, a booklegger, was murdered. Agnes seethes with some mysterious rage at her husband. She may or may not belong to a local religious cult, whose female members wear their hair and clothes in distinctive styles. In the end, though, it’s hard to know for sure just how much of what Sequoyah reports can be relied on. Towards the end of the novel, he says that, like George, he has become a writer of stories, only his are about brainwashed killers and “mysterious deaths in a mythical Oklahoma town.” That’s a pretty good summing up of the novel Sequoyah appears in.

Where the Dead Sit Talking is unusual, dark, and dream-like. It is light on plot, heavy on atmosphere, and strangely mesmerizing. I think the book is a little too ambiguous to be entirely satisfying or successful. Having said that, I’ve found this to be a work that doesn’t easily let the reader go. I’m still thinking about it weeks after having turned the last page.

Rating: 3.5

I think I must've missed something with this book. It was a National Book Award finalist and I saw some excellent reviews. I just never really got into it. I didn't connect with any of the characters. I kept reading thinking I was missing something, or that it was a slow start and things would pick up. But even after finishing, I'm not sure what I was supposed to get from the book. There was definitely some beautiful, poetic phrasing, so I appreciated that. I guess this one just didn't hit me the way it hit others.

WHERE THE DEAD SIT TALKING by Brandon Hobson, recipient of the 2016 Pushcart Prize, was published in February 2018 and this title was itself a Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. It certainly garnered positive professional reviews, including starred ones from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. Based on those reviews and the fact that this story is written by a member of the Cherokee Nation, I was initially interested in this tale set in Oklahoma about teens in foster care. The writing is certainly skillful. However, even though Booklist indicated that the “difficult coming-of-age might resonate with teen fans of literary fiction,” I found myself disagreeing and felt that the high level of angst and the disturbing and heartbreaking scenes would be more appropriate for resilient adult readers.

My review is available on GoodReads. Please visit the following link to see it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2606640962

This is another read from the National Book Award finalist list. I felt like the life of Sequoyah, a teenaged foster boy, is well represented in how he views the world and interacts with others. The pacing of the book didn't work as well for me, as it tends to race through really important moments. There is a lot of violence alongside what I might call disassociation, which seems about right.

I can understand why this book is making the awards rounds, but the only reason I wanted to read this book is because it's description says it's about a Cherokee boy who lives in a foster home, and I wanted to see how the author addressed the Indian Child Welfare Act, especially since it's been making headlines lately. Well, the author doesn't address it all, which I found extremely strange in a book about two Native teenagers living in a house that makes no mention of the foster parents race at all. I assume they're white, but I doubt they would be since it's illegal for a Native child to be placed with a non-Native family. The only way that could happen is if there is absolutely no Native foster parents that can be found, which might explain Sequoya's long stay at the shelter, but it's not mentioned that that specifically is the reason.

This story was well written, and moved along quickly. I found myself intrigued, not because I liked the characters, or the situations they found themselves in, but because there was something familiar about each one of them, and I was curious to see where the author would take them. There is a dream like quality to the whole story that made me question the reality of it, but made it easier to suspend my disbelief about the total dismissal of the Indian Child Welfare Act. It's a good story because it doesn't harp on Native identity, although it acknowledges it, but I just can't let the ICWA aspect go. That should be something mentioned in a story about Native foster youth, especially when the author says he's an enrolled member of the Cherokee nation. Although, I guess that can mean anything, right Elizabeth Warren? ;)

Three stars because I can't let the ICWA thing lie, otherwise it's a four star read.

Sequoyah was in yet another foster home . Sequoyah is a kid with his own troubles, in a foster home with a younger boy and older girl who also have problems. I did like the fact that the foster parents, while kind, are not terribly observant of what their charges are doing, but then again,they weren't really doing anything.
I had to force my self to read this book, and didn't enjoy it one bit.

Where the Dead Sit Talking is interesting in the Literature-sense. I enjoyed the ambiguity and style of this book. The content is both disturbing and interesting, drawing the reader in and repulsing them at the same time. I wish the Indigenous heritage of Sequoyah and Rosemary had been developed further, rather than alluded to but theirs (And George's) experiences of the foster care system were well done.

I was interested in this book because of the Native American connection. I had read another book earlier this year which piqued my curiosity for anything within that vein. However, this particular novel did not fill that need as much as I'd hoped.

Where it does succeed, is the ability to reveal the struggles of a young boy who is in the foster system as he falls into the same patterns as the generation before. It's edgy, interesting, emotionally charged. You can easily see where Seqouya, the main character, is struggling to find his own identity.

There is some harshness to the language, which I felt was abrupt and awkward, which is why I went with a 3 rather than a 4. I just felt it could have been done more tastefully at times, but this could be a personal preference.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me a digital copy for an honest review!

Was blindsided by this novel completely. After reading the first pages of Where the Dead Sit Talking, I was quick to form an opinion of how the entire story would unfold, and had a rough idea of the type of characters that would appear in it. By the end of the story that opinion was smashed and the idea shattered – in a very good way.

There’s no bells and whistles within the narrative. It’s written in a very simple style and the dialogue is authentic making it disarming and very readable.

Both devastating and deeply disturbing, Where the Dead Sit Talking is likely to stay with you for a good long while.

I think this is a vital book, given how it describes the foster care system through the perspective of a troubled Native American teenager who is growing up within that system. It's a topic that isn't addressed a lot in books, and those that do don't quite inspire the same kind of disconcerting feeling as Hobson does here. This was just not the book for me, and I'm not quite sure how I would recommend it to readers. Sequoyah's mind is a pretty troubled place (understandably so) and it's interesting to see him struggle with his sense of self by projecting a lot onto Rosemary. But I felt like the characters aside from Sequoyah needed to be developed a bit more to really make the story less ambiguous. But maybe the ambiguity was what Hobson was going for.

Brandon Hobson’s Where the Dead Sit Talking covers the summer in the life of Sequoyah, a Cherokee teenager who grew up mostly in group and foster homes. The summer when he was fifteen, Sequoyah was placed with the Troutts, a rural Oklahoma couple with an affinity for odd and/or troubled children. Sequoyah shows us what it’s like for a child with a rough upbringing and unhealthy thoughts searches for an identity. This is not an easy read and I’m not convinced the rewards are worth the read.

Sequoyah gives us plenty of background to explain how he got to where he is. His mother is an alcoholic and hapless criminal. He drifts (literally and figuratively) from home to home. No one quite gets him. I can’t blame them, since it was fairly obvious that Sequoyah isn’t quite sure who he is. His social worker places him with the Troutts with stern warnings to follow the rules. If he behaves and his mother behaves, there’s a chance they could be reunited. But at this point, Sequoyah isn’t sure he wants to live with his mother. He’s seen her flaws and knows that she will probably never go straight.

What makes Sequoyah more likely to follow the rules is his nascent relationship with Rosemary, another Troutt foster. Sequoyah sees her as glamorous, troubled, and mysterious. He obsesses over her appearance and her history. I’m not sure if he wants to be her friend, become her, or hurt her—or all three at once. It’s disturbing riding along on Sequoyah’s mental shoulder. I’ve read books with teenaged male narrators before and not been bothered as much as I was by Sequoyah’s thoughts.

There isn’t enough development of Sequoyah and Rosemary’s native heritage (no matter what the publisher blurb says) or of Sequoyah’s gender and sexual identity. For a book that takes a deep dive into someone’s head, there’s a lot I don’t know about who he is. On top of this, the ending of Where the Dead Sit Talking is confusing. It might be ambiguous, but I really wasn’t sure what happened to Rosemary and what role Sequoyah might have played. Ambiguity, for me, only works when I can at least come up with plausible theories about what happened. It’s possible that I disliked this book enough that I just started reading for speed to get through it. I probably missed things, but I’m not curious enough to go back and reread it.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 20 February 2018.

I didn't expect to enjoy this novel as much as I did, mainly because the blurbs gave away so much info. The dynamics between the three foster children were quite intriguing. I wish we knew a bit more about the foster mother because she had a rather vital role in this saga. Without giving too much away, even though the novel immediately warns us who will be dying, I felt the death was rather abrupt, considering how much of the novel (and the title) focus on death. I wonder what would have happened had that person not died. Or, if the novel didn't end so soon after the death. Maybe it was the perfect ending, the kind of ending that leaves readers wondering, pondering, imagining...

980's Oklahoma. At times, a rather dark tale, Where the Dead Sit Talking, is not for the faint of heart. Brandon Hobson's teenage character, Sequoyah, has been abandoned by his father, his mother is in prison, and he had been placed in foster care. Drugs, suicide, sexual awakening/identity are just some of the topics covered within these pages.

At times, I felt a bit unsure and disturbed by the unsettling thoughts that raged in Sequoyah 's mind. Even as I am now finished the story, I have this sickening feeling in my stomach. For now, I shall give it a 3 because this book had great characters and strong writing, but I don't feel that I personally enjoyed it.