Only seven of us met to discuss Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence. We have previously discussed three of her books:  Round House, La Rose, and The Night Watchman. Her books are usually well-liked because, although they include difficult topics and realities, they are also sensitive, informative, accepting, and easy to read. From the first chapter, I could tell the book would be different. I wonder if our lower-than-usual turnout was due to the book, the presidential debate, or just the tides of life.

Our first responder liked the book, but thought it was hard – hard to relive the trials of The Pandemic and George Floyd. He loved finding new words: “carceral,” “swales,” “Gadsden flag,” “arborvitae,” and at least one other I missed. Others chimed in about reading with a dictionary or moving on. One of us didn’t like the book at first, finding the sentences too disjointed and hard to follow. Eventually she started to care about the characters. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, so she had to consider that part of the book science fiction. She learned a lot more about the impact of the George Floyd murder. Another member said that the author was really good at bringing immediacy to the situation. That member appreciated the different styles – sardonic, almost comic, then serious. She loved the book and will read all of Erdrich’s books now. Still another was disappointed. Although he usually enjoys and recommends Erdrich’s books, he was not interested in George Floyd or the ghost. Louise Erdrich said in an interview[i] that this is the first book she has written that takes place in real time and it was very difficult to write.

We also wondered how much of the story is autobiographical.  The name of the bookstore is never mentioned in the book, although the author owns Birchbark books in Minneapolis, which looks in real life much as the bookstore in the novel is described. And the novel’s bookstore owner is named Louise. One of us wondered if Tookie’s former drug use had anything to do with her believing in Flora’s ghost. Another admitted to having used drugs in his youth but does not see ghosts; the ghost was, however, his favorite part of the story and he wanted more. Several of us felt that too many other people in the story also saw evidence of the ghost, making it most likely real. I wondered how much of the story is magic realism, describing and experiencing things in a way that explains how we feel about situations rather than meaning it to be absolute truth.[ii] Still, a couple of us took the ghost at face value – not as magic realism.

Tookie definitely changed during the course of the novel. She softened and became more self-aware, self-accepting. The baby was the turning point. Pollux obviously loved Tookie, but when the baby loved her, when Hetta loved her, Tookie could feel worthy. One of us noted that a baby in his church has transformed their worship service. Connections abound: Someone reminded us that the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate was the governor of Minnesota during the George Floyd riots. Another of us remembered that Desert Springs Hospital also had cots in their garage during the COVID pandemic. In the Las Vegas Sun on our meeting day’s newspaper, an article discussed a probe of possible agent orange use as a cause of rampant illness and cancer plaguing a reservation in Nevada. [iii]

Except for one us, the book was not a favorite. I did not finish reading it this month. I had trouble staying engaged even as I appreciated the construction, the poetry, the possibilities. The Sentence is not a book to be skimmed. I hope I will have a chance to read it again. The novel’s main character takes language very seriously and even considers that it was a sentence that killed her most annoying customer. Before I read the first paragraph of this book, I would have defined the word sentence as a collection of words put together to communicate something more complex than an individual word can convey. However, the first definition in my 40+ years-old dictionary is “a decision or judgment, as of a court.” Why are these two meanings connected? We did not discuss this! As usual, though, the discussion can continue. Here. At the library. At home. With sentences.

• OTHER WORKS DISCUSSED:
• A Gentleman in Moscow (2024) Television miniseries (based on the book by last-month’s author Amor Towles).
• Grimm (2011) Television series
• Ceremony (1977)  by  Leslie Marmon Silko
• House Made of Dawn (1968) by N. Scott Momaday
• The Indian Lawyer (1990) by James Welch
• Through the years we have read five books on Tookie’s list: There There by Tommy Orange, The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, Exhalation by Ted Chiang, The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston,

[i]  PBS NewsHour: Louise Erdrich’s ‘The Sentence’ explores racial tensions in a divided Minneapolis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El9r9wCmyss   Web-accessed 9/12/2024.

[ii] I am not sure I stated my meaning so clearly during the meeting! I also made a connection with the 2011 television series Grimm, which posits a world in which some people manifest animalistic behaviors as werepeople (think: werewolf), reflecting every fairytale and legend you can imagine! It is a pretty violent show, but my family has been watching and at least one of us has started to identify people in the real world as their were-counterpart.

[iii] This is the online link to the article: https://lasvegassun.com/news/2024/sep/10/a-remote-tribe-is-reeling-from-widespread-illness/