Monique Gray Smith

Entertaining, moving and insightful, Tilly and the Crazy Eights is both an adventure story and a healing journey.

Tilly and the Crazy Eights

Fraser Simons

This is a heartwarming story of a group of elders taken to the biggest powwow down in the states. A trip that invariably ends up unearthing tension, secrets, and a reckoning from self awakening. 

I liked this, with a few caveats: it skews more middle grade than young adult. Both in terms of diction and sentence construction. It is a very simple story and feels designed to be accessible and perfectly transparent at all times. It is also uneven, but in a strange way. Once it gets going it rapidly shifts between heartwarming and endearing and emotional conflict. It doesn’t feel like it has any time to breath in any scenes, isn’t concerned with description, or is concerned with the plot whatsoever. The fiction is merely a vehicle for pretty prescriptive advice or perspective on various aspects of indigenous identity.

The voices are distinct for each character and the narrator does a phenomenal job. They’re a chameleon with voice work. At its best, the endearing dialogue between characters is the reason to come to the story and what keeps you there. If it didn’t feel overly emotionally manipulative with its pendulum of tragedy and comedy, it would easily rate higher for me. It occupies the same spot as Midnight Library and Phone booth at the End of the World. Self-help as fiction. If you’re into that, you’ll love it. If you’re not, well, your mileage may vary.

Tilly and the Crazy Eights

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