Arc and the Sediment: a Novel

By Christine Allen-Yazzie

Gretta Bitsilly, a gin-steeped mother of two and self-proclaimed expert at standing just outside the margins of ethnicity and peering in, has been all but eclipsed by the world that eludes her--as a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874216540
• ISBN13: 9780874216547
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Greta is in my head, she can't find her way out.

There are occasionally characters that stick around in my head, some for a while, some forever. Ghosts of fiction that won't leave, who comment on, inform, or even complicate my life. Some I love like dear friends, others not so much. Greta - Christine Allen-Yazzie's protagonist in "The Arc and the Sediment" - is still with me, she shows no sign of leaving, and she is as lost, erratic, and gritty in my head as she was in deserts of southern Utah, the book's setting. This is an intimate book, the kind that connects you to the author and the character she's created. I read it over a weekend. That weekend now feels like a sordid, but worthwhile, affair.

Smart, relevant first novel

I picked up The Arc and the Sediment hungry for fresh modern fiction, and that's what I got. The narrative is not tidy; instead, it is complex, literary, real, and relevant. Gretta is a working Caucasian mom married to a Navajo man, Lance, who has left her--ostensibly because of her inability to stop drinking. But nothing is simple; Lance's leaving has also necessarily occurred against the backdrop of family resentments; the couple's location on the margins of the Utah politico-religious culture in which they live; and Gretta's struggle to find any sense of sustainable identity as a feminist wife, mother, and writer. This is a travel story, describing Gretta's road trip across the southern Utah desert to attempt to bring her husband back from the reservation and his family to their two children, a project about which she feels tremendous ambivalence. Drunk, weary, broke, and divested of hope for any morality but her own, Gretta is exhausted with the contortions of deciding what that might be. Thus, the novel takes on the messy themes of ethnocentrism, colonialism, and the crisis of inhabiting a postmodern identity. Allen-Yazzie's stark, understated prose provides the right tone for unfolding a story which feels sometimes tender, sometimes bludgeoning, and sometimes eerily barren. It's a book that deserves academic attention but also kept me rapt throughout my casual read. I'll definitely be watching for more from Christine Allen-Yazzie.