The Sentence

Product Information

I've been a lover of Erdrich's work since her debut, Love Medicine, with its unforgettable first scene in which June Nanapush lays down in the snow and [redacted]. This and her prior novel are standalones but most of her fiction features recurring characters, families, across place and time. She's been a master of character. I was pleased while reading her trilogy to encounter some of the same characters from the Love Medicine series. Her books are low-key though tragic events occur. They're character-driven. The Sentence” is injected with literary criticism, and features an appendix containing the favorite books of its main character. That appendix itself is divided into themed sub-lists, and across those sub-lists are multiple books that are, themselves, about books. The novel starts and ends with Tookie consulting a dictionary. It is books all the way down. Bottom line is that when you see the name Louise Erdrich on a book, you can count on it being an excellent read. You can count on there being compelling contemporary stories, engaging characters, and a connection with the history of indigenous people. You can count on there being some magical realism. In this one, there is a powerful motif of sins in need of forgiveness. Mistakes need correcting, penance needs to be done, and redemption is a worthy, if not always an attainable goal. The Sentence asks how we can come to grips with the ghosts of the past, and cope with the sins of the present while mass-producing the specters of the future.

Hillel Italie (September 9, 2014). "erdrich wins lifetime achievement literary prize". Nashoba Publishing. Associated Press. Archived from the original on September 11, 2014 . Retrieved September 11, 2014.

Beyond the Book

Nonetheless - despite my budding improvements in this area, I still come up against books where I’m like: Cornwell, Lisa (August 17, 2014). "writer louise erdrich wins ohio peace prize". TwinCities.com. Associated Press . Retrieved August 18, 2014.

Master Butchers Singing Club (Erdrich) - LitLovers". www.litlovers.com . Retrieved November 6, 2019. As Erdrich puts it, in one of the particularly nice bits of the book: "Five days after Flora died, she was still coming to the bookstore. I'm still not strictly rational. How could I be ? I sell books.") The immediacy of The Sentence -- clearly written in the moment, rather than just about it, might not be ideal -- there's something to be said for some distance to events -- but with Tookie fully immersed in the times and circumstances it feels convincing enough.A casual consumer of U.S. popular culture could assume Native Americans were extinct. Save some recent wins, like the Hulu series Reservation Dogs, Indigenous people have more often appeared in the American imaginary as relics of a conveniently distant past. In horror movies, the trope of the Indian burial ground is deployed as a threat to the fantasy of white suburban innocence. In the 1960s, countercultural movements adopted Native American dress and customs like peyote as markers of pre-industrial, pre-urbane simplicity. This remove is by design. As the essayist Richard Rodriguez put it in Days of Obligation, “Indians must be ghosts,” for “Indians represented permanence and continuity to Americans who were determined to call this country new.” It’s not uncommon for Americans to claim Indigenous ancestry, often with no more evidence than a great-great-grandparent with “high cheekbones” — an epidemic of self-identification that some Indigenous scholars have called “ Cherokee syndrome.” Time and distance are key here: They allow for the distinction between native and settler to be collapsed, while preserving as much racial purity as possible. Erdrich makes a cameo in this book! She’s the owner of the store where Tookie works, which bears a striking resemblance to Erdrich’s real-life bookstore, Birchbark Books. How does her appearance here strike you? The proximity of events (which keep coming) also keeps the book from becoming too reflective -- but also gives it an at times surface-skim-like feel, as much as Erdrich seeks to ground it in Tookie. Previously incarcerated for a decade for a crime she was set up to take the fall for, Tookie spent most of her prison time reading and upon release looking for employment in a bookstore. In the present day , she works for an independent bookstore in Minneapolis owned by “Louise” and is married to Pollux , a former tribal police officer and a caring and generous man who is also an authority in Native American traditions and rituals . After a regular (and slightly annoying) patron dies while reading a manuscript covertly taken from the bookstore , Tookie starts feeling a supernatural presence in the bookstore and believes that it is Flora’s ghost haunting the store. Initially she is the only one who feels the presence and there are some entertaining and funny moments but when an unpleasant encounter with Flora’s ghost leaves her unconscious, Tookie realizes that she needs to get to the bottom of why Flora refuses to leave. With the help of her colleagues she starts to explore the origins and content of the mysterious manuscript which Tookie and her friends believe played a part in Flora's death and find a way to rid the store of Flora’s ghost once and for all - all this while working in the midst of a pandemic and worried for her family’s health and safety .While she delves into the details of Flora’s life ,Tookie gains perspective on her own past , life choices and the importance of the people and relationships in her present life. Kakutani, Michiko (August 20, 1986). "Books of the Times". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved November 6, 2019.