Omar El Akkad

Early on in Manikanetish, Naomi Fontaine’s spare, bone-clean sophomore novel, the narrator, a young Innu woman named Yammie, recounts the story of her grandmother’s death. It is a slow, painful exit from the world: the old woman’s body is lined with sores, the final decline months long, the terminus a hospital bed. There she spends her final days surrounded by…