I decided to read this because it is a National Book Award winner and because it has so many good ratings on goodreads. It is simultaneously a mystery, a coming of age story, and a portrait of a Native American reservation in the 1980s. There are some very complex, interesting characters here and...
It took me a while to get into this one but if you make it to the half way point the pace accelerates and becomes a pretty good read. Many people call this a coming of age story but it seems to me that Joe's character growth occured right at the time of the inciting incident. Also, it seems to me...
I've enjoyed all of the novels that I've read of Louise Erdich. I don't find her a particularly easy author, but something about her work keeps me coming back for more. This collection of short stories only adds to my admiration of her writing. The 36 short stories were written over 30 years. ...
phew. finally done with this one! So good writing sometimes gets wearisome. I like Louise Erdrich a bunch but found this book to be a challenge. I think that part of it was the weird confusion of stories that were familiar from being part of other books of hers and the way most of the stories...
I picked this book up at a sale for about an Euro - one of the best spent Euros of my life. It is one of the few books that I have read that have really moved me.This is a book of 36 short stories written by Erdich over the period of 30 years. They are on a number of Topics, but always at the hea...
I was disappointed in this historical fiction possible WAW nominee. It is the 4th book in the Birchbark House series, but that wasn't the problem. A map of the story is included at the front of the book and I tried to follow it but the story just didn't work with the map! So that bothered me as...
It’s human nature to want people to like what you like, but when they resist, pointing to reasons they should like it is like explaining a joke. No laughing, no liking. Such it is with my friend and Louise Erdrich. I’m a HUGE fan of Louise. I consider her among the top five living writers in the ...
While much has been made about configurations of gender in the novels of Louise Erdrich, Last Report of Miracles from Little No Horse (LRMLNH) transcends earlier accomplishments from The Beet Queen and The Antelope Wife. The unifying aspect of sex becomes the force early in this story that turns ...
Of all the stories that have been told on this little globe we inhabit, there are few tales that entice me more than stories of revenge and retribution. I'm not talking the brooding tales of violent stoic men pushed beyond their limit by an underworld that destroys their single shot at happiness,...
The novel is book-ended by WWI and WWII. It is a mystery with many twists and turns, but underneath the varied themes it feels as if it is mainly about love and romance, in all its varieties, and war, in its many phases.Arriving home to Germany, after World War I, after three years of acting as a...
How does one even begin to review the writing of Louise Erdrich? Her words resonate with ancient mysteries and intricate complexities which draw me into her characters' lives time and time again. This novel is no exception.In The Painted Drum we follow the story through the eyes of different peop...
I very much enjoyed reading The Game of Silence, but I think it is important to consider that much of what is revealed (or not revealed) depends on the viewpoint of the person telling the story. It is certainly important to acknowledge Erdrich's Native American heritage and the importance of min...
I am a great admirer of Erdrich, so I was disappointed in this quasi-travel memoir. It read more like a series of daily notes: a little bit about the writer, a little bit about how enchanting she thinks her baby is, a little bit about her important lover, and books she reads, and books she took w...
Confession: I'm a fussy poetry reader, preferring collected poems to their selected counterparts. My theory is that if they're good I'd rather read a bunch of them than a cherry-picked few before moving on to another handful carefully selected by someone whose taste may be very different from min...
Her clothes were filled with safety pins and hidden tearsLast week I sat on the steps of a downtown pier, stalled in the summer sun, reading my 1989 paperback edition of Love Medicine. With its Washington Husky-purple cover and title blaring in giant Brittanic Bold white font, the book must have ...
PEACE AT her sparkle-chrome kitchen table. The lacquered surface covered with beading trays, cigar boxes of beads, stacked papers. Snow and Josette carefully slipped very old letters into page protectors. Most of the paper that Wolfred Roberts had written on through the 1860s, then 1870s, was sti...
In the yard, the sheets were thrashing wild, the overalls and Mooshum’s work shirts were ballooning out. Even my mother’s pastel underthings were flying straight back, wisps, and her bras corkscrewed around the wooden pins and line. She must have gone somewhere with Geraldine, leaving the baskets...
The line of identical brown doors and windows, like staring faces, has a sullen aspect. No skylarks. The texturized siding is a defeated looking tan color. There is a small office, dim but for a glowing television screen. The yard is dust, struggling weeds, trampled gravel. When looking for a sma...
Men feared them like the gallows. Night fell When I combed them out. No one could see me in the dark. Then I stood still Too long and the braids took root. I wept, so helpless. The braids tapped deep and flourished. A man came by with an ox on his shoulders. He yoked it to my apron And pulled...
As the family traveled, they suffered from the loss of two hunters. Old Miskobines had the wily patience of age, and Animikiins had great strength and endurance. The family moved north. The area they passed through was well hunted, and as the birds and geese were now moving south it was increasin...