Name: Sentence
ISBN: 9780062671134

Louise Erdrich

A Novel

Sentence

elizabeth

I first encountered Erdrich in Love Medicine when an English teacher I was obsessed with assigned it, and I read Tracks at some point in college. While I remember enjoying both, I had no definite memory of the texts beyond that, and this book reminds me that Erdrich is just....so good. 

Tookie is one of the better (flawed-but-likeable, fully known by the author, etc.) protagonists I've encountered in a while. Sometimes she'd say something, and I'd be like, "That's so her," without Erdrich needing to tell me or underline it. And Erdrich's talent for show-don't-tell goes beyond this characterization; I felt I knew the nuanced family dynamics intimately simply because of the way Erdrich lets readers observe them. 

I only felt like there was a little too much "telling" in some of the chapters that detail life in Minneapolis in the midst of the pandemic and in the midst of an important racial justice movement ignited by the murder of George Floyd. I was living in Milwaukee at the time, which was similar (not the same, just similar) in many ways, and I kind of felt like these chapters didn't offer me much that my own memories, reckoning, and experiences couldn't. I can see how these chapters might feel especially important to people more distant from its events and themes. For me, it's the part of the book that I didn't feel as hungry to read. 

That said, it's all worthwhile. It's a meaningful layer on top of the novel's focal point, a ghost story that I don't really want to say much about because my greatest joy in this book was experiencing this haunting. Both layers explore the way history lives--to remind us, to hurt and heal us, to whisper and scream at us.

Sentence A Novel