LAUGHING BOY AND SLIM GIRL

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18542, 12 April 1930, Page 14 (Supplement)

LAUGHING BOY AND SLIM GIRL

AN INDIAN LOVE LYRIC. “Laughing Boy,” by Oliver La Farge, is already an American best seller, which fact does not necessarily impress English readers. Nevertheless • the book is such a happy blend of simplicity and charm that its English success is readily assured. Here is the book that the average novel reader is always vaguely hoping for. A story with just that sufficiency of enchanting strangeness to touch the reader’s Pagination, and transport him to a land of beauty and happiness. It is the story of the idyllic love of Laughing Boy, a Navajo Indian, for Slim Girl. It resembles in many ways the beautifully designed and coloured Navajo rugs that the Indian women weave. The story is purely Indian, full of the ceremonial tribal life of the Navajos. Slim Girl is missionary trained, her parents having died when she was a child, and so to a large extent, she has become Americanised. Her sophistication, while estranging Laughing Boy’s relations, binds him the closer to her. It is her ambition to return to the half-forgotten ways of the Indians, and she hopes to achieve this through her husband.

“Laughing Boy” is a book that makes the reader eager to read more of Indian life and custom. One wonders perhaps if its subtlety and underlying simplicity is not the product of a white civilisation rather than the true spirit of the primitive Indian, which doubt, however, takes nothing from the enjoyment of reading.