- The Good: A rivalry between two gifted boys
- The Bad: An erudite overly-literary novel
- The Literary: References to classical works, poetry, literature, and modern movies
Milton Muleborn admits he’s an unreliable narrator from the start, but he recounts his childhood tale all the same. Milton has always envied a boy his own age, Matthew Echota, a talented Cherokee artist whose work receives acclaim, while Milton’s does not.
Milton and Matthew are the only two boys in school who are interested in drawing, poetry, and movies, so they should have been best friends. But Milton’s deep jealousy and resentment grows each time Matthew receives praise from a teacher, wins a school award, or shuns social time to “work on his novel”, and worse of all, when the girl Milton likes becomes fascinated with Matthew’s native heritage.
At its center, the narrative is a story about two boys’ life inside a violent juvenile detention facility that’s eventually shut down due to rampant abuse. Even in the detention center, Matthew seems to get preferential treatment from the adults. The other inmates are in awe by Matthew’s seemingly aloof and calm demeanor, and the way he even emerges from solitary confinement as if from a restful vacation. All the while, Milton struggles psychologically from the abuse of his father and other adults, and becomes distrustful of Matthew’s motivations, though he also describes Matthew as a Christ-like figure.
I like the fantasy elements of the story, which combine both Christian and native imagery, including the blood of Christ, the parting of the red sea, frogs that rain from the sky, and animal tricksters. Many of the secondary characters are directly named after other literary references — from Strangelove the prison headmaster, to the prison counselor Vlad Siren, to their shared love interest Cassie Magdal.
The Devil is a Southpaw is the name of Milton’s in-story novel about Matthew, though the line between truth and fiction is blurred. Is it an embellishment that Matthew predicts death and disaster with startling accuracy? Or is Matthew an outcast who struggles with mental illness? Hallucination and memory and different perspectives distort the truth of what actually happened, and the uncertainty of form doesn’t end there.
The novel itself is also highly fragmented and disconcerting. Included are letters written by Milton from the afterlife, poems written by both Milton and Matthew, and a synopsis of a fake movie starring John Wayne. Ghosts, visits from Frida Kahlo, and movie references crowd the narrative. The ending of the book also resists a neat resolution.
In this way, the book itself feels deliberately “literary”. Hobson obfuscates the narrative in an attempt to blend myth and reality, alternating symbolism and highly sensory descriptions, which crafts a novel more cerebral than about characters. I don’t mind some reality-bending, and I love unreliable narrators, but this one goes a little too far into uncertainty.
I picked this one up for its Cherokee lore and audiobook narrator, and on that level I really enjoy the reading experience. Recommended for fans of challenging ambitious indigenous contemporary literary fiction.