User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I absolutely adored this book! Going on an adventure with Bird and Mimi was a lot like spending time with my grandparents when I was a teenager. So many laughs and so much fun. And just a side note, I loved the fact the town of Wetaskiwin was mentioned as I was born there and haven't ever seen it in a book :)
This was my first time reading Thomas King and definitely will not be my last as I plan to check out this authors backlist. Loved his writing style and the flow of Indians On Vacation. I'm so glad that Sweetreads Box included it in their September box.
Rating: really liked it
This was a book I found dull and disjointed. Was not expecting that reaction as Thomas King is one of my favourite, award-winning authors.
Blackbird Mavrias, partly of Cherokee heritage and his long-time partner, Mimi Blackfoot are travelling through Europe. They are in search of a bundle of herbs and family souvenirs that Mimi's uncle brought with him to Europe when he joined a travelling circus a hundred years before. Bird is a writer but is stalled in his craft. He exhibits many moods, ranging from depression, despondency, distress, and discontent. Mimi has given each of these 'demons' separate names. He also has some pain, probably psychosomatic and diabetes. She is much more energetic and enthusiastic, always rushing off to popular tourist sites and trying to calm Bird's dark moods.
In this book, they are touring Prague we get flashbacks of their visits to other European countries, and to their lives back in Canada and the USA. In part, this works as a travel guide, with descriptions of sites of interest to the tourist, and ones to avoid. It was sometimes uncomfortable reading about their conversations which made me feel like an eavesdropper. It also touches on systematic racism, mistreatment of Indian people and tribes, and injustice in North America. .
Rating: really liked it
Starts off as an enjoyable vacation romp, but then King kicks me in the gut with realness in this ultimately pessimistic (realistic) view on class, race, ageing and travel. The two main characters are indigenous; Bird, a curmudgeonly journalist, and his wife, Mimi, a free-spirited artist. Proof that opposites do attract, the banter of this long-together couple is a highlight of the novel. In Prague, tourist sites are sought out by Bird and Mimi and had me googling to see the Cerny giant alien babies and the men pissing in a pond sculptures. As the couple travel around Europe, however, they find problems are not so different abroad from what they are at home in Guelph, Ontario. Petty thieves, protests, appropriation etc. Of the main characters encountering refugees in Budapest, people are “so full of good intentions, as long as you don’t have to do anything”. King, a bit curmudgeonly himself, ultimately calls it as he sees it.
Rating: really liked it
so fukken cute😭 and u bitches still can’t spell Prog🫶
Rating: really liked it
So we were in Prague.
Rating: really liked it
So we're in Prague…This becomes the tag line of the book, much as Kurt Vonnegut used
”So it goes.” This is not going to be my favourite among King's books, but since it's one of the last ones (if you believe him), I had to read it. The last two interviews of the author that I've heard, he claims to be done writing. Maybe something will inspire a new book. I can hope.
King mines his own life experience for details of this novel. The narrator, Bird, is a man of Cherokee and Greek heritage, as King is. King's wife, Helen, is fond of travel just like Mimi and King is grumpy about it just like Bird. While traveling in Europe, King and his wife encountered a scene with refugees as described in the book. I wonder if that travel experience didn't form the seed of this novel.
”Nothing,” said Mimi. “We did nothing. Oh, we were sympathetic and we were outraged, but we didn't do anything.”
“We thought about it.”And that's the rub, isn't it? There are all these intractable problems in the world and what are we as individuals supposed to do about them? This is what contributes to Bird's demons of depression and self-loathing that follow him around, ready to ruin any part of any day. Especially these days, when more residential school locations are being scanned in search of unmarked graves, that's how many of us are feeling. I just can't believe that people still claim to be surprised by these findings. Have they not been paying attention for the last several decades? Truth & Reconciliation Commission, anyone?
I think we must come to the same conclusions as Bird does—what we do may not change the world, but it changes us, mostly for the better.
Rating: really liked it
This was a nice read. The relationship between the two main characters was really sweet and it was interesting to hear them talking about Bird's inner struggles. But, I found the book to be a bit aimless. It didn't seem to have much of a plot really or an ending. It was just okay for me.
Rating: really liked it
“Story and memory. Memory and story. ...Together they are history.”
I absolutely loved this book! I found myself slowing my reading pace in order to capture each sentence and enjoy the experience of reading it. This is my introduction to Thomas King and I look forward to reading his backlist. The characters of Mimi and Bird were so beautifully told with nuance and imperfections that delighted.
The overarching idea of Indians on Vacation was a search for items that were in a bundle made by Mimi’s Blackfoot ancestors. In their search for the bundle, the couple follow the destinations as set out by postcards Uncle Leroy sent almost a hundred years ago. Leroy had taken the family bundle and travelled with a Wild West show across Europe. Mimi and Bird travel to each of the cities and in this story Prague is the focus.
Narrated by Bird, we see his true love for his partner and are acquainted with his anxieties and fears through the personalized demons who accompany him everywhere.
Commentary on historical wrongs and of present day aggressions are subtle yet clear and told through stories and observations.
Thomas King is an American-born Canadian writer who identifies himself as Cherokee, German and Greek. Indians on Vacation is published by Harper Collins Canada and was published this week. Thank you to the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance readers copy in exchange for an honest opinion.
Rating: really liked it
I laughed out loud three times in the first five pages. To say that this book is entertaining would be an understatement.
Expect more than laughs, though. Indians on Vacation offers insights into marriage, travel, and mental illness. Be prepared to dig deep between giggles. I promise it's worth it.
Rating: really liked it
Aug 17, 630am ~~ Review asap.
820pm ~~ I thought this would be the final Thomas King book in my author project, since it was the last one I had in house and as far as I knew was the last one he had written.
But I happened to look over his GR author page and saw three other titles: one I had skipped, thinking I would not really be interested, and two that I had not known about at all. I have now corrected that lapse and the three books should be here in a few days. So I will not mark my Thomas King challenge complete until I read one more novel, a poetry collection and a non-fiction offering.
I'm happy to find these other books because I am never quite ready to leave King's world. This book was not quite as entrancing as others, and honestly it took me a chunk of pages to adapt to the back and forth style King used here, but I managed to still end up loving the story he tells.
Bird and Mimi are in Europe. In Prague, as probably every reviewer will remind you. King reminds us all the time: So we're in Prague. Blackbird Mavrias and his partner Mimi Bull Shield. Between the Prague episodes are flashbacks to other cities, other vacations in their quest to learn whatever happened to Uncle Leroy who left home a hundred years ago and sent postcards from Europe but was never seen again.
Once you get into the story, though, you realize there is more going on than looking for Uncle Leroy. Not completely unexpected, with Thomas being in charge, you know. Layers. He is very good at layers. And the layers here have to do with the relationship between Mimi and Bird, Bird's attitude towards life in general, searching for ancestors in a Greek village, and dealing with the uncertainties of modern society.
I wondered during the entire book just how much Bird was meant to reflect King himself. And thanks to GR friend Wanda, I was able to hear a CBC radio interview featuring Thomas King talking about this book. I saved it until I had finished, just in case any secret secrets were told, but it would have been okay to listen earlier than I did. The only 'secret' revealed was that yes, this book was semi-autobiographical because King and his wife Helen had actually seen many of the events shared in the story by Bird and Mimi. The museums, the hotels, the refugees at the train station.
And King himself admitted to feeling the way we all do sometimes (now more than ever before, perhaps). Do you ever feel helpless to DO anything for the world? King does. I do. Do you ever feel like nothing you do would matter anyway? King does. I do. Do you ever feel a little guilty that your life is easy compared to that of say, a refugee from Syria or Ukraine? King does. I do.
These are issues any thinking person has to face. What is the best way we can help? What can we do? What the hell is wrong with humans, anyway?! Why do we keep allowing hatred and fear to control the world?
You will think about this type of question when you read this book, but you will also laugh at the antics of Bird's demons. Eugene and the others. They are hilarious and might also be familiar to you, except your versions would surely use different names.
So we're in Prague. Do we find out anything about Uncle Leroy? Does Mimi ever make it to the hotel breakfast buffet? And exactly who is Oz, anyway?!
Rating: really liked it
Have you ever taken a trip with relentlessly miserable, impossible to please, cantankerous, picky, opinionated, hypochondriac elderly people? I have and it's not fun. Indians On Vacation relived that experience. The hook is interesting enough, the uncle of an indigenous family in Canada Leroy Bull Shield was compelled to join a traveling circus in Europe, he brought the family's medicine bundle with him and his descendants retrace his steps to try track down the relic.
Unfortunately, the travel chronicles of this search are presented in an insipid tedious manner. Much of it is the male Blackbird Mavrias of Cherokee heritage being a giant pain in the arse to his wife Mimi Bull Shield (Blackfoot, Alberta) who has painstakingly planned out the Europe trip. They are in Prague which he reminds himself and us readers ad nausem but really it doesn't matter where they are because his demons (all named) will make him carry on his depression, despair, self-loathing and chip on his shoulder.
Then there are flashbacks of his history inserted between the travel sections that really don't add anything either to our understanding of the character or development of the story. Such as, he as a teenager drove his mother's employer's car without permission to Oklahoma to find his absentee father, didn't manage to locate him and ended up running out of gas on the way back, selling the spare tire for money and never got found out.
Then there are these characters and events obviously artificially inserted to prop and spice up the plot, to no avail. The Oz character who Blackbird befriends at the breakfast buffet of their lodgings is needlessly enigmatic but flat. He wears two watches, behaves like a bohemian game show host and talks in an exaggerated Hercule Poirot fashion. At a critical juncture, he swoops out of the blue with no rhyme or reason to save Blackbird from a situation and makes an extraordinary effort to craft and put to paper a fake story of Uncle Leroy's fate for this couple he barely knows. The Syrian refugee crisis is also featured briefly, again not sure of the point as the couple has the same reaction most people have: pity, horror, frustration at their impotence to help.
Yes, this angle is novel in that it's not First Nations people on reservations, suffering abuse in residential schools, the sixties scoop or being targeted by authorities. Well, Thomas King does manage to insert that in this European travelogue. I have this sense that the title and the journey of our protagonist couple is meant to be read from a laconic sardonic sense. It's not all misery and no clean water, Indians can go on vacation too! Except they can't get a vacation from their minds, because of the weight of all the collective trauma. The thrust is similar to Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island, which features a middle-aged Indian man (from India) in Venice following the trail of a Bengali myth of a traveling gun merchant.
I find it difficult to review the work of a First Nation's author, weighed down by a guilt of being lumped in with the colonial settlers. However, as with any criticism of works of a BiPOC author, I firmly believe it would do both them and the literary world a disservice to just shower them with praise and affirmation purely on the basis of representation. There's much more discussion to be had beyond about who the literary judges and gatekeepers are and who set the rules for publishing standards, aesthetics and content. But I will not mince words by saying that with this book, remove the innocuous premise of it being about two First Nations people traveling in Europe, the pacing and progression would not be at the level of a travel blog. I was tempted to DNF it two-thirds in, three-quarters in but persisted to finish it, left with a unrewarding and unsatisfying feeling. After all that, the medicine bundle is not that important and they can make a new one. And it can contain anything, anything special to the trip. The fate of Uncle Leroy can be fabricated. Let's just make it up as we go along, shall we?
Rating: really liked it
This was an interesting way to experience Prague. The author places a North American Indian couple in the Czech Republic in search of a Medicine Bundle that may have been deposited in a European Museum some hundred years ago. They have been to Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona ... following the trail of postcards sent a century ago. They have roots in Alberta, my home province so i am familiar with the settings of parts of the story told in the past. I have not been to Prague and the descriptions make one feel is along for the journey. There is a humourous rapport between the two main characters: Mimi and Bird, that elevates the story to another level. Demons from Bird's past put in appearances to show he tormented by both his past and his future.
Rating: really liked it
I read this book because there was a talk/panel about it for the virtual Eden Mills Writing Festival. I have read a couple of other novels by Thomas King, and I honestly found them very hit or miss. I enjoyed Indians on Vacation. It’s more character-driven than plot-driven, but there is enough that happens to make the novel memorable.
It analyzed many issues found in Canada and throughout the world. It shows struggles with mental health and coping mechanisms. It also reflects some of the atrocities committed towards various indigenous tribes in the past, and some still occur today. These subjects are all subtly weaved into the novel while following Bird and Mimi on their vacation to Prague.
I’ve never been to Prague, but the novel makes it sound stunning and strange at the same time. I have moved Prague higher up on my list of places to explore around the world. I am a Guelphite. So hearing references to my town was so fun and left me with a warm and cozy feeling, and King described Guelph perfectly. He captured the atmosphere and favourite hometown spots.
When I first started reading this, I didn’t know how I felt about jumping back and forth between Prague and the past stories. I got used to it and found I was looking forward to both sides of the story. The next significant observation I had was that I thought Bird and Mimi were in a toxic relationship. I was frustrated when she wouldn’t have breakfast with Bird. I often thought, why did Bird go to Prague if he doesn’t want to do anything? I felt like I was more similar in that I do like to be in my cozy home with my comforts in the City that I love. However, while I’m on vacation, I usually am the planner. I have everything written out and a flawless schedule. Maybe this is why I don’t travel much.
As the book continued, I liked Mimi and Bird’s relationship. It seemed real. The way they communicated made them seem like any couple you would see on the street. They were comfortable with each other and seemed to harbour resentment in some moments. At the end of the book, one thing is so apparent: they genuinely love each other.
I liked the personification of his thoughts and feelings. Because there were only two main characters in the novel, I thought his “demons” added variety. The book didn’t become monotonous. I believe I pin-pointed what each demon represented, except for Chip. I figured Eugene was disappointment, and Kitty was anxiety or extreme, irrational thoughts; the twins were depression. I thought maybe Chip was competition; he is often brought up concerning sports or movement. But, I don’t see Bird as an overly competitive person.
The last point I want to raise is: Was Oz another “demon,” or was he a real person? I can’t decide. If he is a demon, he would be happiness, which is why he isn’t present with the other demons. I notice that he is never present when Mimi is, and he seems always to be hopeful and happy. Oz was probably my favourite character. He reminded me a lot of Wednesday in American Gods with some of his statements and mannerisms.
Overall, I recommend this book. I love supporting local authors and will continue to read King’s novels in the future.
Rating: really liked it
I feel really, really bad giving this a 1-star review. Unlike many books to receive this (dis)honour, I don't think this is a terrible, poorly written book. I hated it, but I don't think everyone would hate it and I think for some people this could easily be a 5-star read or even a favourite new novel. Certainly, the book is on enough bestseller, "best of the year" lists that, if anything, I'm an outlier.
With that caveat out of the way, this book was a slog to get through. I didn't care for King's writing style in The Inconvenient Indian, but I at least found the subject matter extremely fascinating, which helped. Here, it was honestly a struggle to get through. The conceit of the novel is that Bird and Mimi, a retired indigenous couple from Canada (he's half Cherokee, she's Blackfoot), go on a European vacation to escape some bad health news Bird recently received and to track down the lost "Crow Bundle", a package of family treasures Mimi's uncle absconded with to Europe decades ago.
The novel is broken up paragraph by paragraph between present-day in Prague where Bird and Mimi go to all the tourist traps, bickering all the while, and Bird's reminiscence of things their adventures remind him of in their life. I get what King is going for, but it really. Breaks. Up. The. Narrative. Flow.
I'm sure that many will be charmed by Bird and Mimi's easy back-and-forth, but I found it exhausting. For a couple that's been together as long as they have, and been through as much as they have, they don't seem well-matched and seem to make each other unhappy a lot of the time, if I'm being honest.
There are readers out there who will like this (or who will at least pretend to, given how trendy it is right now), but I'm not one of them. This one will go in the library donation pile so hopefully it can find some readers who will love it.
Rating: really liked it
Last year, I decided to pick up a book by one of Canada's foremost authors. Thomas King is a household name amongst Canadians in the same way as Margaret Atwood is. Born a Californian, King spends most of his career teaching in Canada. His book, The Inconvenient Indian demolishes the false history and narratives about Native Americans in the US and First Nations people in Canada.
One of my goals this year is to read more books from Native American authors. It's not because I'm harboring some kind of obligation but because I know my ratio of books from different races versus white authors is a little wonky. Expanding my horizon, if you will. As well, I noticed how biased my choices are in learning about World History. I'm a Canadian who didn't go to school here, and who rarely follow our politics. This was my way of trying to learn: read more books from Canadian authors, particularly from Indigenous descent.
This book, is perhaps, an easy favourite. Not only for the ease of King's narrative, but also for the way he discussed social issues of class, race, displacement, and mental health so seamlessly that you won't noticed until you go back a few sentences to re-read. This book follows Bird and Mimi. They're on a quest to find some relic from Mimi's uncle. Clues were left via mail and post cards from Europe, and so the couple found themselves in Prague first.
From there, we see a perspective from this couple about their own history and their marriage as they witness the world around them. Throughout the story, we see Bird fall slowly to his illness; some sort of rheumatological disease that affects mostly Asian and Indigenous people. We also see him stroll all over Europe with the accompaniment of his "demons" -- which for us mere mortals, represent all the self defeating attitudes and mindsets that plagued us day in and day out.
As they run into Syrian refugees who came by boats to Greece, they're confronted by how easily they turn away from the needs of others. It also affected me in a way. Especially now that we are in a raging pandemic. People busking for coins on the street or intersections and I easily ignore them and say, well, I can't open the car door or window, now can I? Further reinforcing the fact that we could find excuses not to help out. Don't get me wrong, this book didn't come off preachy. It was just how we should think about our actions next time and how we could balance the good and the bad.
I especially love the relationship between Mimi & Bird. They've been married for a long time and it hasn't been roses and rainbows. But they remind me of how a marriage takes work, and understanding each other's flaws and misgivings only strengthen it over time. Indians on Vacations has its moments of seriousness and sharp humour, a perfect blend of sarcasm and realness that cut through its message laced with a slight flavour of world politics and banal married life.
