Sorrow of the Earth

A fascinating and compelling portrait of an era when anything was possible. This book transports you to a time where displaying 'redskins' was deemed as entertainment for the masses and a few flourishes from a swindler and con-man could turn a brutal massacre into family entertainment. Having loved. 'Bury my heart at Wounded Knee', this book adds a coda to thus story. It unraveled the way they Sitting Bull and his people were treated once the 'West was Won' and the intelligent. Perceptive way in which Vuillard tells the story is heartbreaking, a fascinating glimpse into history which has been largely forgotten by a superb storyteller. A must read.

If you think it odd that it takes a French book to dissect the problems caused by Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show, and the reaction we nowadays have to the vanquished Chief Sitting Bull being part of it, well – that's partly the point. This is a biography or history book inasmuch as it edits things (picking up on just one photo out of a much longer session featuring the two rivals), but almost a novel in that it breaks into the present tense and posits a royal 'we' as witness to things. But for every 'ooh, aren't snowflakes nice?' styled comment we get a ''business is a form of insanity'', which grounds the book into a mirror looking quite positively at the present day as well as the late Victorian period. It's definitely, from the unusual title down to the quite bizarre coda, a moral piece, looking at Bill Cody and his partners in crime as they went about their global spectacular. Biography, history of entertainment, social studies lesson if anything, it's proof positive Pushkin Press should look at more non-fiction on their books. It's as slender as some of their short novels, but none the worse for it. Four and a half stars.