“The power of Silko’s novel is not the framing, but her prose, which shifts between bare and charged exposition and internal semi-coherence.”

Silko’s slow-burn though brief novel plunges readers unwillingly into the perception of the novel’s indigenous, alcoholic, traumatized WW2 veteran protagonist. Returning to the reservation, Tayo’s violence and dull, addled world is frequented by blackouts, memory loss, and distortions. It’s an unpleasant space for readers, but we also recognize the truth of his condition.

Along the way, in a nearly surreal parallel, we read a fable about Reed Woman that at first appears irrelevant to the story. We soon find, of course, that the titular “Ceremony” Tayo must pass through is one spiritual, one which simultaneously abdicates from the despair of white hegemony while engaging the natural world and resisting simple violence as an answer. 

None of this is actual spoiler, because the power of Silko’s novel is not this framing, but her prose, which shifts between bare and charged exposition (friends drinking in a truck, tense dialogues with community) and internal semi-coherence (What part of Tayo’s understanding is physical and which fantastic? And which of these is therefore more real, more true?).

This is a novel which unfolds, where the mythic “Call to Adventure” is drawn across dozens of pages at a time, and the quest forward subtle. Tayo does not often recognize it, so readers must. Indeed, slow gradual is this book’s opening to meaning that Silko sets aside ‘chapters’ and offers us broken fragments, scenes and reveries and poems, which assemble it all. More experience than story in this way, Silko’s novel is a powerful articulation of other ways of seeing.