Tootsies by Sarah Black

[reviews_and_ramblings]

When David’s life seems to crash down he has only one place where he wants to go, Stanley, inside the Sawtooth Wilderness. In that place, when he was only a child, David was happy, and he felt at home, and he felt loved. Quanah Parker Running Bear was the one who loved him, the Native American boy next door, who fed David’s mind up with stories and stories, the same stories now in the first poetry book he wrote.

Even if apparently David is running away from an embarrassing situation, I think that indeed he is going back home; David has done what he should, he has published his first book, with success, he has proved that he can be independent and good far from Quanah Parker Running Bear, but not happy. When he arrives in Stanley, he doesn’t immediately go searching for Quanah Parker, but I think he knows that, when it will be the time, Quanah Parker will arrive for him, same as the boy did when they were young.

And same as so long ago, when Quanah Parker arrives, there is no need to explain, no need to ask: David knows that he belongs to Quanah Parker, and it was time for him to come back home and in the arms of the only man he has ever loved.

The feeling of the story is a mix of romanticism and comedy; love is obviously the engine behind David and Quanah Parker, but as David likes to think in haiku poem, so Quanah Parker prefers to be enigmatic, like a sphinx. Quanah Parker almost never replies to a direct question, he prefers for David to arrive by himself to the answer; same as he did with their relationship: Quanah Parker didn’t go searching for David, even if it was clear that David was his soul mate, but instead he waited for the time when David was ready to come back to him.

Quanah Parker is a really possessive man, but he doesn’t need to force people to stay with him, he knows that, if he let David free, in any case David will always come back to him; he has not even need for David to swear eternal love, actually he has no need for David to even say the love word, it’s more important that David behaves accordingly to the word.

Even if the story is centered around David and Quanah Parker, and it’s only a novella, the whole cast of supporting characters is so well delineated that they seem to come out from the pages, even if they have only few words for them: Quanah Parker’s father, the grocery store owner, the old lady, the bookstore owner… everyone of them contributes to the big Native American tapestry that is this novella.

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Comments

[elena-62.livejournal.com]

Hi, Elisa!

Thank you so much for the review of one of the latest stories of one of my favorite authors!

Obviously I loved it. By the way Sarah knows a lot bout native Americans because she lived in a reservation for a good while. I like the fact that for her this kind of setting is never just a matter of putting some colour in the story, but it feels real. The two protagonists were utterly different, but I loved both of them in equal measure.

Ciao

Antonella

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

it was a very good story, particular but very romantic.