FICTION

LITTLE by David Treuer (Graywolf: $22.95; 248 pp.). Little was born with crippled hands and has a one-word vocabulary--”You.” His death at the age of 3 and the secrets surrounding his parentage are at the center of David Treuer’s well-written, but problematic first novel.

Spanning generations of Native Americans living on a Minnesota reservation, Treuer’s novel interweaves the story of Little with the history of the land, its people and what was taken from them. Little, with his mixture of deformity and joy, is the physical embodiment of these characters’ brutal history.

In spite of solid pacing and vivid descriptions, “Little” is filled with a mind-numbing parade of the horrific events that form these characters’ lives. Rape, murder, violence, abandonment, slavery--the list is seemingly endless. What is meaningful in literature is not that an event happened, but what its effect is over time, and how that translates into our world. Unfortunately, “Little” doesn’t quite make the jump.