Fire Exit (2024) by Morgan Talty

 Book Review

Fire Exit (2024)

by Morgan Talty

   Morgan Talty's debut collection of short stories came out in 2022.  I read it when it was released, but didn't write a post about it till last year when it popped up in the Maine chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America where I had it at #3 for Maine, #5 for Northern New England and #12 for all of New England.  I liked The Night of the Living Rez but didn't love it, probably because it was a collection of short stories and not a novel.  Here, then, is the novel that the public demanded.  It covers much of the same physical and mental territory:  The Penobscot nation of Maine, it's people and landscapes and the intergenerational trauma and social disfunction that links his narrative to those of other Native American writers and writers from other disadvantaged socio-economic groups. 

   Anyone who read The Night of the Living Rez:  Drinking, smoking, getting on the wagon, falling off the wagon, snowy landscapes, sleepless nights, etc.  Charles Lamosway, the narrator, is a white guy who was the stepson of a Penobscot nation member whose death got him kicked off the reservation.  He fathered a child with a Native woman but she chose to disguise this fact and has raised her with a Native partner who has assumed her patrimony. Charles' Mom is suffering from Alzheimer's or Dementia or both and doesn't recognize him, even though he spends most of his time in this book taking care of her.  Charles is himself a recovered alcoholic who spends his free time hanging out with an active alcoholic who has no other friends.

   Lamosway has become determined to tell his daughter "the truth," that he is her biological father for reasons that remain somewhat unclear.  Eventually, he articulates the idea that he needs to tell her "his stories" so that she understands her history, but I am frankly unclear, and this after reading the book, what he possibly had of value to tell her.  

  

  What I did find very interesting is that Talty is an author who wrote a first novel that IS NOT a thinly veiled take on his own experience.  Talty is actually a member of the Penobscot nation, so Charles, a white guy raised on the res,  can only be a creation of his.  This marks him out as being more advanced then the great majority of first-time authors who are either writing a thinly veiled book about their own experience growing up, or their own experience as a young adult or their own family history. 

  Like Tommy Orange did in There There I yearn to see Talty move back in time- to retell the Native/European encounter from the perspective of the Native side.  It's a POV that has been sorely neglected by the American publishing industry and we could do with a shelf full of historical fiction from the Native perspective, authored by Native writers. 

   It was just happenstance that I listened to the Audiobook instead of reading the e-Book (though I might buy a copy if I see it on sale inside Maine)- the Audiobook makes sense because it is a first-person narrator, single voice novel.  On the other hand, the subject matter is depressing and I would have personally preferred to grapple with this work on the printed (or e-printed) page.  I would recommend actually getting a copy of the physical book.