Assumption by Percival Everett is really something special and unique. This book is actually a collection of three short stories centered around a small-town New Mexico Deputy Sheriff named Ogden Walker. The stories initially read like a procedural crime thriller, you have the small town setting, the dogged police officer, layers of mystery, and even the small town bits and pieces that make it feel like a lived in world. However, as you dig deeper into the story, you find bits of information tha...

Imagine, you're a fish on a hook. You swim away, you feel yourself being reeled in--you get some slack and feel as if you're getting away again. It's a slow, long process and the truth is that no one knows, not the fisherman and not yourself how it will all turn out. You are the fish. Percival Everett is the fisherman. I won't ruin it for you but I'll tell you this much: the battle is fierce. Assumption is three separate stories and also one single story at the same time. Look for the clues if y...

This book Bloodman'd* me, or I could also say that it did the same twisty thing that made I'm Thinking of Ending Things such a disappointment because there's no way I'm trying to turn that title into a verb; basically this morphed from a series of vignettes about a hapless yet well-intentioned deputy sheriff investigating crimes and fly fishing on his off time into some sort of Secret Window, Secret Garden mind trick within the last two pages. Presumably there was a reason for the shift, but sin...

Assumption is a very different novel in style, voice and ostensible subject than the other Everett novel I recently finished, Erasure: A Novel. It is at least as good, if not better, in my opinion. It's made up of three novella-length stories tied together by the character of Ogden Walker, a deputy sheriff in a rural New Mexico county, and the problem of finding out who we are. (view spoiler)[In Ogden's case, the answer is terrifying. (hide spoiler)]I really can't talk about the book without spo...

Percival Everett is one of the most intriguing novelists writing today. His greatest work, Erasure, is a brilliant send-up of race, media and the publishing world. It's a literary masterpiece featuring a remarkable novel within a novel.Assumption is a set of three stories about Ogden Walker, a deputy in rural New Mexico. On the surface they are straight ahead mystery tales. Ogden searches for the murderer of an old woman in one, uncovers a deadly prositution ring in another and finally goes out

I love Percival Everett's work, but I didn't understand this book. It's three crime stories that don't have connecting tissue except for they all involve Deputy Ogden Walker. The stories borrow and repurpose some material from at least one short story in Half an Inch of Water, except they take place in New Mexico and Colorado instead of Wyoming. There is a twist at the end, but it didn't feel as if it made sense. No set-up and details in the story conflict with it.I've looked at some other revie...

The most disturbing of all of the Percival Everett books I've read. Disturbing can sometimes be a good thing.I never know what to expect when I open one of Mr. Everett's books for the first time, and he always surprises me.

My fourth Percival Everett novel and all I can think is how different each one of them has been, how surprising, how delightfully snookered by this book I'm feeling right now, in the best way possible. A wonderful read.

Ok, what....was that? At first I thought it was a mystery, just better written. Then that it was undermining certain features of mysteries, the whole idea that a thing can be solved, resolved, explained, which I guess it still kind of is. Then the end happened.

"Assumption" starts well. A former MP-turned deputy sheriff in New Mexico, Ogden Walker is a wry, reflective type. He makes fairly interesting company. He's also the only black male within his community, though one of the other deputies--Warren Fragua--is Native American. You learn about them and the place and the people the work with in a leisurely way. It seems like the set up for an interesting book, and the quality of writing is quite high. What looks like a novel is really made up of three

felt kinda let down at the end. i mean, okay, i get it and everything, but i don't think it actually worked. did make me want to read more percival everett, though, so i guess it worked perfectly on that level.

I don’t know how Percival Everett made it on to recommended reading list, but I downloaded Assumptions and launched into what seemed like a well-done, standard, diverting mystery. I continued to think that’s what I had in my hands right through the first novella-length account of Deputy Ogden Walker’s investigation of various criminal activities in and around Plata, New Mexico. I figured I’d stumbled on to a skilled Tony Hillerman, who actually knew how to create characters and plots instead of

Ogden Walker is a deputy sheriff in a New Mexico county so remote that if it were real instead of fictional, most westerners never would have heard of a single town. Ogden's averse to carrying a gun, doesn't consider himself much of an investigator and lacks a personal life, unless you count eating at his mother's house or trout fishing with one of his co-workers.He finds himself entwined with several sets of killings that appear to be linked, but poor cooperation from associated low lifes, plus...

The first thing you need to know is that I am a sucker for that particular kind of good writing that doesn't draw attention to how good it is. Which is to say that I am a fan of Percival Everett's writing, which is not only exactly this kind of writing, but is also humane and compassionate in its characterizations. Each character is presented with such compassion that they feel complex and real. Which is to say that before I even opened Assumption, I was all in. Assumption follows Ogden Walker,

It would be hard to review this book without giving away its delicious secrets, so i'll only say it's a wild ride. A rare if not solitary example of noir but with metaphysical elements that keeps the reader guessing. Ogden is a wonderful creation -- attempting to do his job as deputy in a remote New Mexico county while solving baffling incomprehensible crimes as well as the local bigotry. Dialogue that snaps with cinematic reality. Not a little humor that spikes unexpectedly. Liked this one a lo...

Assumption is three short stories featuring the same setting and characters, and the ending of the third story casts enough of a shadow over the main character as to make you rethink what happened in the first two stories. This last feature, I guess, is what makes this a novel. If you like. Or just call it three stories. Or look to the title and realize Percival Everett is messing with you.Percival Everett likes to mess with you. Go read Erasure, or American Desert. I normally don't approve of t...

Two-thirds really engaging and strong, with great characters and a deadpan, spare narration I enjoyed immensely (as I have in other fiction by Everett). But it fell apart for me at the end, which relied on a clichéd device without complicating it enough to be satisfying or surprising in a way as meaningful (to me, at least) as the story had earned.

Checked this one out a long time ago, and have been re-checking it out since then. When I finally picked it up to read it, I read the whole thing in a day. (Insert witty and/or saccharine phrase about how life is sometimes that way. Maybe compare it to a box of chocolates.)This book is bleak. But not so much that you'd mind. It's Noir, there's murder, there's conspiracy, there's a whole lot of lying. But there's also a general air of country geniality. The guys in the Sheriff's department have a...

Inventive, absorbing, and ultimately genuinely harrowing. You have never read a crime novel quite like it.

I've yet to read a page that Everett has published that I didn't find enthralling (I've read Erasure, Wounded, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier in addition to this one). This book had me just as abjectly addicted as the rest, even if it doesn't seem to have quite the same scope as those other books; it delves somewhat less into social questions, perhaps (or maybe I just lack the imagination to see how it does it?). But it's fascinating how slippery identity gets in these three connecting, deceptively...