paperback, 464 pages
Published March 23, 2021 by Harper Perennial.
This book has a lot to offer. For me the pages just flew by. I thought it was the perfect combination of taking a historical fact (the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota) and a fictionalized story and characters around to catch the athmosphere and storys of that time. Highly recommended!
4.5 but not quite a five star read the length of time this took me to read had nothing to do with the content and everything to do with me struggling to use an e-reader this year. took months to get to about 20% in but i read the rest in the last 24 hours. delighted by the almost mis direct of the title, i loved a lot about this and want to read more erdich immediately. really great writing full of love and truth
I am incapable of reading quiet contemporary realism these days, what can I say.
Much different than I had expected, in a more-so sort of way, and it just kept getting better. This is not, contrary to whay you may have heard, the Inspiring Story of One Man Standing Up to Powerful Forces — well, not only that. It's... I don't really know. It's a series of threads, of lives, touching irregularly but with startling force each time they do; their relationships building something powerful yet sublime and ephemeral while keeping each thread distinct. If Erdrich were a composer this would be one hell of a symphony.
This is my second Erdrich book; I will look for more. She writes with grace. Treats her characters with respect, spending time and words on each, giving them a vivid threedimensional life. The best way I can think of to describe it is, it's not like I "felt like I knew the characters": more like I was …
Much different than I had expected, in a more-so sort of way, and it just kept getting better. This is not, contrary to whay you may have heard, the Inspiring Story of One Man Standing Up to Powerful Forces — well, not only that. It's... I don't really know. It's a series of threads, of lives, touching irregularly but with startling force each time they do; their relationships building something powerful yet sublime and ephemeral while keeping each thread distinct. If Erdrich were a composer this would be one hell of a symphony.
This is my second Erdrich book; I will look for more. She writes with grace. Treats her characters with respect, spending time and words on each, giving them a vivid threedimensional life. The best way I can think of to describe it is, it's not like I "felt like I knew the characters": more like I was fascinated by each one, and learned much about them, but never got to know them, which is so much like life: even our close friends and lovers are their own people, heck, we're often a mystery to our own selves. We will be innocent at moments, dignified others, we find strength when we need to, despair at other times; and when we find good people we want to be with them more, hold on to them, learn more. These were good people. (Not all. But that, too, is real life).
Solid 4.5 stars; rounding up because many hours after finishing I'm still thinking about the story, the characters, the small but vivid window into Native American life; and I'm feeling a lot of complicated emotions, most of all gratitude.
Erdrich writes well, and her novels give interesting insight into modern (or at least recent) Native American experience. I really like the way she uses her Indian characters’ conversations with non-indigenous people to challenge misconceptions a lot of people have about tribes’ relationship with the federal government; it allows her to educate without preaching. But her stories are bleak, and bleak isn’t really what I need just now.
